For DayZ, selling a game before it's done pays off

The popularity of online zombie apocalypse game DayZ continues to rise, as the standalone version (it's also a mod for Arma II) has racked up sales of nearly 800,000 units, according to Dean Hall, the game's project lead at Bohemia Interactive. "We (Bohemia and I) had very ambitious plans for 2014 already, however this amount of sales was completely unexpected," said Hall in a Reddit thread. "Honestly, 250,000 within a quarter was what I would have considered a success. So to move nearly 800,000 in under a month is crazy." That's a significant haul for a game that is still in alpha as a paid Steam Early Access game. The alpha of the game sells for $30, meaning the game has grossed around $24 million. We figured the game's sales trajectory would be steep -- on day one of its release last month, the game made sales of over 140,000 units in 24 hours. The success of DayZ standalone is an example of a new way in which people buy games, and how developers sell them. While it's certainly not the first game to be sold while in alpha (Minecraft is the most notable example of a game that did this), it shows an growing trend that will be pushed in part by Steam's wide reach and its Early Access program. Hall originally released DayZ as a very successful mod for Bohemia Interactive's military shooter Arma II. With the mod's success, he's now working at Bohemia as project lead on the standalone version.