DayZ
How long can you survive a post-apocalyptic world? A land overrun with an infected "zombie" population, where you compete with other survivors for limited resources. Will you team up with strangers and stay strong together? Or play as a lone wolf to avoid betrayal? This is DayZ – this is your story.
First-Person ShooterHorrorMMORPGOpen WorldSandboxSimulationSurvival
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- Released
- 2018
- Developer
- Bohemia Interactive
- Platforms
- 1 systems
- Critics
- Not scored
- Steam Deck
- unsupported
- Download
- 25 GB
What is DayZ?
How long can you survive a post-apocalyptic world? A land overrun with an infected "zombie" population, where you compete with other survivors for limited resources. Will you team up with strangers and stay strong together? Or play as a lone wolf to avoid betrayal? This is DayZ – this is your story.
Description as published by the developer on its own store page, read 30 August 2026. It is marketing copy, not our assessment.
The record
| First released | 12 December 2018 |
|---|---|
| Developer | Bohemia Interactive |
| Publisher | Bohemia Interactive |
| Platforms | PC |
| Genres | First-Person Shooter, Horror, MMORPG, Open World, Sandbox, Simulation, Survival |
| Languages | 12 supported |
Source. Catalogue facts from Wikidata , seeded TBA. Store data from Steam, read 30 August 2026.
How was DayZ received?
Method. Player figures are Steam's own totals for the PC version, read 30 August 2026. The Metacritic score is the one Steam publishes on its store page and can lag the site itself. Neither is our opinion. We have not published a review of this game.
What does it support?
| Capability | Support |
|---|---|
| Controller | Not stated |
| Cloud saves | Yes |
| Cross-platform play | No |
| Mod support | Steam Workshop |
| Online play | Yes |
| In-game purchases | No |
| Steam Deck | unsupported |
| Download size | 25 GB |
| Add-on content | 3 DLC listed |
| Age gate | 17+ |
Content descriptors
- Frequent violence or gore
- General mature content
Method. Read from the publisher's Steam listing on 30 August 2026. Describes the PC version. Console versions differ.
What does it cost?
Steam price in US dollars, read 30 August 2026. Prices move hourly and vary by region. Check the current price.
Is DayZ worth it?
78% of 468,392 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Mostly Positive. It costs $24.99 on Steam, on sale from $49.99. About 37,066 people were playing at once when we last checked, so it is still active.
That is the data, not a verdict for sale: whether it is worth it depends on the price you pay and what you want. Players do report problems — see the reported-problems section below before buying. We have not published our own review of this game.
How long is DayZ? How long to beat it
Total play time for DayZ is about 134.4 hours to do everything, and around 50.5 hours to reach the end of the main story. These are player-submitted times from HowLongToBeat, not our own, shown with the number of players behind each.
| How you play | Hours | Players logged |
|---|---|---|
| Just the main story: straight through the critical path | 50.5h | 15 |
| Main + the extras: story plus the side content most people do | 91.5h | 8 |
| Completionist: everything: 100% the game | 134.4h | 2 |
At its current price of $24.99, beating the main story works out to about $0.49 per hour. That is the price divided by the hours, a value read and not a verdict: a longer game costs less per hour, which is not the same as being the better game.
Source: HowLongToBeat community submissions, read 2026-10-19.
DayZ system requirements
The minimum requirements from DayZ's Steam page. These are what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings.
| Memory | 8 GB RAM (other games at this level) |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core i5-4430 |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 · runs on a low-end GPU |
| Storage | 25 GB (more games this size) |
| System | 64-bit OS required |
Can your PC run it? Check DayZ against your exact GPU, CPU and RAM.
Where DayZ sits on the grid
Compare the whole catalogueDayZ plotted on the axes the GamingPickz Score is built from, on the full 0 to 100 scale so its position is its real one. Change either axis to see where it lands.
1 games have both
Players. The share of Steam reviews marked positive, pulled toward the catalogue average in proportion to how few reviews stand behind it. A game with 200 reviews moves a long way toward the average; one with 200,000 barely moves at all. Without this a title sitting at 100 percent on nine reviews outranks Half-Life 2 at 98 percent on 278,000.
Popularity. A blend of two things that are not the same. Audience is how many people wrote a Steam review, which is a floor on how many played it. Reach is how many language editions of Wikipedia document the game, which is cultural footprint rather than sales. A game can score high on one and low on the other: a huge free-to-play title has audience without reach, and a landmark console exclusive has reach without a Steam audience at all. Where both exist they are averaged; where only one does, that one carries it.
- PC
Every point links to that game's entry. The value map and the reception map are fixed views of the same data.
How positions are decided
No paid placement, no favouritism, live third-party data
- Placed by the published method, not by us. Every coordinate is computed from the axis definitions and weights printed on this site. Nobody moves a point. See the axes.
- Nothing here is paid for. No sponsored placements, no promoted slots, no arrangement of any kind affects a position. If that ever changes it will be labelled and sit outside the ranking.
- No favouritism, including our own. The 16 games we have written full reviews of are scored by exactly the same formula as the other 1,510, from the same third-party inputs, and they land where it puts them. Our own opinion of a game does not enter its coordinates.
- A position is not an endorsement. It says how a game was received and what it costs, not that we recommend it. Where we do recommend something, it carries a written review with a name on it.
- Fetched from live third-party data. Player sentiment from Steam, critic aggregates as published on store pages, prices checked hourly, attention from Wikipedia. Each figure carries its source and the date it was read, and we do not adjust any of them.
Is DayZ still active? Players right now
DayZ has a healthy, active player base: 37,066 people were playing at once when we last read Steam on 19 October 2026. This is a snapshot, not a live counter, and it is a recent concurrent reading rather than an all-time record. For what is trending across the catalogue right now, see the pulse.
How many people own DayZ
This is an estimate, not a sales figure, and the two are not interchangeable. SteamSpy samples public profiles and publishes a range; the range here spans a factor of 2.0, and that width is the honest part of it. We show both ends rather than a midpoint, because a midpoint would look like a measurement.
Steam only. Console and storefront sales are not counted, so a game that sold heavily elsewhere reads low here. Read on 19 October 2026. Where a publisher has announced a real unit figure, that appears separately and carries its source.
Estimated sales for DayZ
These are estimates, not reported figures. Bohemia Interactive has not published unit sales for DayZ, and nobody outside the company can measure them. What follows is arithmetic on the review count, with the method printed below so you can check it or reject it.
How this was calculated
Steam sales track review counts closely enough that dividing one by the other across games with published figures gives a usable multiplier. This is the standard method for estimating sales from outside a publisher.
| Reviews on Steam | 468,392 |
|---|---|
| Sales per review | 30 to 60 |
| List price | $49.99 |
| Assumed average selling price | 33% to 66% of list |
| SteamSpy owner estimate | 10M–20M, a different measure, see below |
What this cannot tell you
Steam only. Console, Epic, GOG and retail sales are not in here. For a game that sold heavily on PlayStation this is a fraction of the real number.
The band is wide because the method is imprecise. Review rates vary with price, genre, launch era and how insistently a game asks. Published analyses put the ratio between 30 and 60 for paid games, and we show the whole range rather than picking a point in it.
The owner estimate above measures something else. SteamSpy counts accounts that have the game, which includes free weekends, bundles, giveaways and gifts. It sits higher than a sales figure for that reason, and the two are not alternative answers to the same question.
Revenue is the shakiest line. It assumes an average selling price well below list because most copies move in sales, and it ignores regional pricing, refunds, key resellers and whatever deal the publisher actually has with Valve. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a figure.
If Bohemia Interactive publishes a real number we will use that instead and say where it came from. Our editorial policy covers how we handle figures we cannot verify.
DayZ price & deals: is it on sale?
We have one reading so far: $24.99 on 30 August 2026. Prices are checked daily from here, and this becomes a chart once there is more than one point to join. A single observation is a price, not a history.
Latest DayZ updates & patch notes
Pulled from DayZ's own Steam feed on 5 September 2026. Posts marked as from the studio were written by the developer; the rest are articles Steam syndicated from elsewhere. Every one links to its source.
What readers say about DayZ
Reviews written by people who have played it. These are separate from the GamingPickz Score and are never averaged into it: that score comes from thousands of Steam reviews with a sample-size correction, and a handful of unverified ratings would distort it rather than improve it.
Loading reviews…
Problems players report
We read the 300 most recent negative Steam reviews of DayZ on 14 September 2026 and counted what they mention. These are complaints, not confirmed defects: we have not reproduced any of them, and a review describes one person's machine. What the counts tell you is which problems more than one person ran into.
- Launchers, accounts and anti-cheat10 of 300 (3%)
the anti-cheat is absolute garbage and does literally nothing to stop them .
Steam review, 18 July 2026 · 709 hours played · 125 readers marked it helpfulAnti-cheat software is not a substitute for competent server-side validation.
Steam review, 29 August 2026 · 590 hours played · 16 readers marked it helpful
A further 7 reviews call the game buggy or broken without saying how, which is why they are counted separately rather than assigned to a theme. Counted by keyword across review text, so a review discussing two problems is counted under both. Read the reviews yourself.
DayZ mods
DayZ supports Steam Workshop, and the 20 most-installed mods have 55,908,188 subscribers between them. The most installed is CF.
Did it run on your PC?
Tell other players how it ran on your machine. One tap, from your saved PC if you have one.
Where DayZ appears
The ranked lists and finder pages DayZ qualifies for, from its own genre and platform to what it takes to run.
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Games like DayZ
24 games overlap with DayZ on the tags Steam players applied to it, on genre, and on theme. The closest are Just Survive, No More Room in Hell and Dying Light.
DayZ head to head
See DayZ compared side by side, on score, price, specs and more:
More DayZ comparisons: vs State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition, vs BIGFOOT, vs Hunt: Showdown 1896, vs Infestation: Survivor Stories 2020, vs Contagion, vs Murder Miners, vs Zombie Army Trilogy, vs Arizona Sunshine VR Legacy, vs BlackShot: Mercenary Warfare FPS, vs Anarchy: Wolf's law
Common questions about DayZ
What platforms is DayZ on?
DayZ is available on PC. It first released in 2018.
How much does DayZ cost?
$24.99 on Steam in the United States, read on 30 August 2026. Prices move often and vary by region, so check the store before buying.
Do players recommend DayZ?
78% of 468,392 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Mostly Positive. That is players rating it, not our review. We have not published a review of this game.
Does DayZ work on Steam Deck?
Valve rates DayZ as unsupported on the Steam Deck, from its own testing.
How big is the DayZ download?
25 GB on PC, from the storage requirement on its Steam listing. Console versions differ.
Who made DayZ?
DayZ was developed by Bohemia Interactive and published by Bohemia Interactive.
Is DayZ worth it in 2026?
78% of 468,392 Steam reviews are positive (Mostly Positive), and it is $24.99 on steam. That is the strongest signal we hold; "worth it" depends on the price you pay and what you want, so weigh the sentiment against the current price above.
Is DayZ dead?
No. About 37,066 people were in-game at once when we last read Steam's concurrent-player figure. Peak activity is higher; this is a recent snapshot, not the all-time peak.
Is DayZ on sale?
Yes, right now. DayZ is $24.99 on Steam, down from its $49.99 list price (about 50% off), read on 30 August 2026. Prices move, so check the store.
What are the system requirements for DayZ?
At minimum, DayZ needs 8 GB RAM, a Intel Core i5-4430, a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760, 25 GB of storage, from its Steam listing. That is what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings. Check it against your own PC on the can-I-run page.