DayZ Throws Shade at The Day Before

Game ZXC

DayZ

By Daniel Morris

Published Dec 12, 2023

Highlights

DayZ, a popular zombie survival game with a dedicated community, has thrown shade at the recently released The Day Before, which faced closure soon after its launch.
DayZ has persisted in the gaming industry, with a decade-long shelf life and a healthy player population on Steam, while The Day Before has faced significant issues.
Despite its imperfections, DayZ's developer, Bohemia Interactive, has persevered to bring the game to its current state.

Zombie game DayZ has thrown some serious shade online at the recent release The Day Before. The news comes hot on the heels of The Day Before developer Fntastic closing down just days after the game was released.

DayZ began life as a mod for Arma 2, developed solely by Dean Hall. The mod exploded in popularity in 2012, and Hall was brought on to develop the standalone version of DayZ alongside the rest of Bohemia Interactive. It first reached Early Access in 2013, but it wasn't until 2018 that the game finally released its 1.0 build. DayZ struggled across the years to reach feature parity with its 2012 mod equivalent and was kept alive by a dedicated community, which continues to help it remain relevant to this day. It certainly wasn't all smooth sailing for DayZ, but Bohemia Interactive's perseverance with the game ensured it has experienced a much longer shelf life than players can expect The Day Before to have.

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The shade was thrown in a statement by DayZ on Twitter, which celebrates the tenth anniversary of the game. In its words, the celebration is "for no reason at all." Given the fact that The Day Before is offering refunds regardless of play time now due to the state of the game, it seems like extremely convenient timing for this statement to be released. Despite this, the statement never mentions The Day Before by name, although the general tone of describing itself as "10 years and still un-defeated" hints at there being more here than meets the eye.

For some, there might be mixed feelings about the statement. On one side, DayZ was never perfect, so it could potentially be seen as a hypocritical move. Yet, on the other side, Bohemia Interactive has worked hard for a decade now to bring DayZ to its current state. At times, the easier option may have been to move on. It could definitely frustrate the studio to see another developer put out a game like this. After all, just days ago The Day Before developers were asking players not to accuse them of scamming, and given how different the final product was from how it was advertised, there are many players out there who certainly may feel like they were sold a lie by the marketing.

10 years and still un-defeated.

While The Day Before developer is deleting itself from the internet amid its ongoing disaster, DayZ isn't going anywhere any time soon. SteamCharts indicates that the game frequently hovers anywhere between 20,000 - 50,000 concurrent players on Steam, which is a healthy population for a game of its age. With Bohemia Interactive currently occupied with Arma 4, it remains to be seen if gamers will eventually get a sequel to DayZ. If they do, hopefully, they can expect something more polished than The Day Before.

DayZ

DayZ is a horror-themed zombie survival release. Players will hop in and do battle against the undead while attempting to find and craft better equipment. They will also need to content with other players that are keen on stealing their stuff.