Skip to main content

Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

PC phenomenon DayZ hits 500,000 players milestone

That's how popular.

Zombie-infested ArmA 2 mod and gaming phenomenon DayZ has just smashed through the 500,000 player barrier.

"Congratulations everyone, with your support through tough times, mistakes, troubles, and technical problems, we now have over 500k users!" a message on the official DayZ Twitter account stated.

When Eurogamer spoke to DayZ creator Dean Hall at Rezzed last weekend, the player figure stood at 420,000. The day before, that figure was 400,000.

"We've got 420,000 now. We'll have 430,000 tomorrow," Hall said.

"Currently we're running 22,000 concurrent at full peak, and 10,000 off peak, which is pretty huge numbers considering the original data structure and system was designed to handle 100 concurrents, and two servers," Hall revealed during his DayZ Rezzed developer session, now available to watch online in its entirety.