Welcome to the world of DayZ, hit by a new and presently unknown infection which has wiped out most of the world's population. You are one of the few that have survived and now you must search this new wasteland in order to fight for your life against what is left of the indigenous population now infected with the disease. Go solo, team up with friends or take on the world, as you choose your path in this brutal and chilling landscape using whatever means you stumble upon to survive.

DayZ is a gritty, authentic, open-world survival horror hybrid-MMO game, in which players follow a single goal: to survive in the harsh post-apocalyptic landscape as long as they can. Players can experience powerful events and emotions arising from the ever-evolving emergent gameplay. There are no superficial tips, waypoints, built in tutorials or help given to players. Every decision matters, there are no save games, no extra lives, every mistake can be lethal. If you fail, you lose everything and you need to play again from the beginning with nothing but your wits, and your two hands. Fight the hostile environment, where every other player can be friend or foe and nothing can be taken for granted.

After five year is Early Access stage, DayZ is finally nearing the end of the development road by going into Beta and tentatively aiming for v1.0 launch by end of the year.

Last week, Bohemia Interactive released the DayZ BETA update on Steam - a tipping point in the Early Access development of the game that finally sets DayZ on course for a full 1.0 release later this year. The BETA update introduced a major engine overhaul with long-awaited features like base building, significantly improved vehicle simulation, or modding support.

Today, Bohemia Interactive is proud and humbled to announce that they have just welcomed the four millionth Survivor into the post-apocalyptic land of Chernarus - the fictional world where DayZ takes place. 

"It's always nice to see new players trying DayZ, but what's probably even more important to me is that our existing community is slowly coming back into the game after taking a break. We have dozens of community servers opening again and experimenting with early mods. We've more than doubled our daily active players count after the PC BETA, and that's with a game that still needs a lot of polishing and bug fixes. The growing excitement is such a welcome change, especially after the last two years that were really tough for us and the community alike" added Eugen Harton, DayZ's Lead Producer at Bohemia. 

The features and content introduced in the PC BETA (with the exception of modding support) will also be making their way to Xbox One next week, still in time for the Xbox Black Friday sale and bringing along a number of important fixes for issues reported by the Xbox community.  

While the update does not mark the start of BETA for DayZ on Xbox One yet, it is the biggest content update since DayZ's debut in Xbox Game Preview this August. After delivering the update, the development focus will shift from introducing new features to collecting feedback on the overall user experience and inventory management - the last important steps before the game can reach BETA, and eventually aim for a full release.

On both PC and Xbox One, DayZ will continue development post 1.0 release, introducing new content and features as free platform updates. 

Starting today and running all the way to November 26, DayZ is 15% OFF in Xbox Game Preview, priced at $33,99/£26,99/33,99€. On Steam, it is still available for its Early Access Alpha price of $34.99/£22.99/27,99€.