DayZ 2020: Year in Review

Hello Survivors,

It's been a while since we last made a proper blog post for the state of DayZ. Thus, we would like to give you a summary of the development of DayZ that happened this year.

DayZ in 2020

The core work for our team in 2020 was founded on four major updates to support the game and expand on its content. We are happy to see that, although this year presented us with significant challenges due to the pandemic, all updates except one could be released within our schedule. They featured new and returned weapons, the M3S truck, and features such as the cold survival, broken legs, or the rework of the fireplaces.

DayZ 2020 in content

5 new/returned weapons
Returned broken legs
Returned the M3S truck
Massive upgrade to the cooking and cold survival
Upgrades to Chernarus
New base building flags for easier base persistence
Continued modding support

While 2019 was a year of releases for Xbox, PlayStation, and our Livonia DLC, 2020 was aimed at providing new content for you, as well as stabilizing the game, and giving meaning to survival features. Basic balancing elements of DayZ like cold and hunger finally got their deserved attention, to make the game tough, but still fair and encouraging towards new players. We continue to empower modders and server owners to the best of our possibilities, to allow them to create and shape their own worlds and adventures in them. Modders have had time to get to know the tricks of DayZ Modding, and we have been seeing major additions to the Workshop, with our very own Adam Franců releasing his anticipated Namalsk mod to the public earlier this month.

DayZ 2020 in numbers

Major Updates: 4 (1.07-1.10)
The top peak of concurrent players on PC: 40,545 in February (highest since Feb 2014)
Top monthly average of concurrent players on PC: 20,700 over the last 30 days (highest since Feb 2014)
from January to November, DayZ saw 4.1 Million new users, with Xbox leading with 2.5M
Top viewers on Twitch: 107,352 in August (all-time record)
BattlEye bans: 24,000 and counting (in comparison to only 10,000 over the previous 4 years combined)
9,000+ mods created by players

The Journey continues - DayZ in 2021

2021 is coming in hot, and we want to be ready. A roadmap for the new year is being finalized, and we are looking to expand our team. We are just beginning to check out the next-gen consoles' hardware, which will hopefully allow us to overcome some of the major frame-drops that console players have been fighting with since our initial releases there. With support from new additions to our team, we hope to resolve our ongoing weaknesses regarding some of the synchronization issues and physics-related problems with vehicles. We are ready to explore the depth of what DayZ can become when it fully unfolds its potential. Stay tuned for early 2021, when we will share more about our plans for the new year.

You can discuss the topic in this forum thread: https://forums.dayz.com/topic/249779-dayz-2020-year-in-review/

The DayZ Team wishes you Happy Holidays.