Day Z mod drives ArmA 2 sales up 500%
Although it's still in alpha, open-world zombie survival mode Day Z has done wonders for sales of military simulator ArmA 2.
"There's no doubt that the thrilling Day Z mod currently drives Arma 2 Combined Operations sales on Steam," Bohemia Interactive's Marek Španěl told Kotaku.
"Sales have increased almost fivefold from how they were before Day Z's Alpha release."
The ArmA II developer plans to work support for the mod into its next official patch.
"Considering the mod's popularity we are committed to do some related work in the next Arma 2 update (1.61)," Španěl said.
"We are actively communicating about how we could best support the Arma 2 user community especially in multiplayer and Day Z players are right now a significant portion of people actively playing the game, so of course it's high on our priority list to support it the best we can."
The mod is actually led by Dean Hall, a New Zealand lad and one of Bohemia's own staffers, who told games.on.net that ArmA 2 was the perfect base for the game he had in mind.
"You look at the ArmA engine - it is built for this. It was begging for this to be made," he said.
"It’s got realistic ballistics, it handles large quantities of AI. Despite people’s criticisms of its netcode, it is very flexible and can handle problems. Particularly with the recent 1.6 patch, there’s a little bit of rubber banding, but that means it’s quite forgiving.
"All these aspects are what is needed to do what I call a ‘mature Minecraft’".
An apt comparison; the mod is lighting up the Internet in a very similar way to Mojang's phenomenally successful sandbox. Check out the trailer below and visit the webpage for more info.
