DayZ alpha approaches whopping 800,000 sales milestone

Sales of the standalone version of open-world zombie survival romp DayZ now stand around the 800,000 mark, creator Dean Hall has said.

Half of those copies came within the game's first week on sale.

Originally released as an alpha on December 16, 2013, Hall said his barometer for success sat at 250,000 copies sold within the game's first three months, and the huge success of the Steam Early Access title will have a "very positive effect" on the game's continuing development.

Posting on Reddit, Hall responded to a question about how the success will affect development. "We (Bohemia and I) had very ambitious plans for 2014 already," he said, "however this amount of sales was completely unexpected. Honestly, 250k within a quarter was what I would have considered a success. So to move nearly 800,000 in under a month is crazy."

"We'll be finalizing our roadmap in mid January, but it is safe to say that this kind of result will be having a very positive effect on that roadmap."

DayZ standalone is still in active development. "It is a work in progress and therefore contains a variety of bugs," says publisher Bohemia. "We strongly advise you not to buy and play the game at this stage unless you clearly understand what Early Access means and are interested in participating in the ongoing development cycle."