Over 500,000 people are now vying for survival in the world of DayZ, the realistic zombie shooter designed to have players hunted by the undead. Starting out as a mod for ARMA II, the game has taken on a life of its own, with promises of standalone releases and Minecraft-style update structures. That isn't stopping people from going through the hoops needed to play it as it is, and the player base is expanding rapidly day-by-day.
Take the fact that at the beginning of the week we heard that DayZ had 430,000 players. That's a massive leap and, with a Steam summer sale on the horizon, it's likely to jump even higher over the coming weeks. This continued increase of players continues despite the fact that a massive group of cheaters were recently blocked from the game, a move that some felt would damage a limited community. The opposite seems to have turned out to be true.