Today is the first day of the annual Steam Summer Sale. Gamers across the world hopped onto the store at 1pm Eastern time to see what deals they could snag on games that they probably will never even play. One of the games that stood out as an odd choice, was the Early Access title DayZ.
Created originally as a mod for ARMA II, DayZ has went on to become a stand-alone title that continually stays on the top of the Steam Top Seller list. While the game has sold over over a million copies, it is still considered an Alpha and the developers have emphasized that purchasers should expect bugs and other issues. So seeing the game on sale for 15% off gave many gamers pause.
This feedback reached DayZ creator Dean “Rocket” Hall, and he responded via Twitter that he is “as clueless and shocked as everyone else”. He asked that people stop asking him about the sale, since apparently he was not consulted and could not change the price if he wanted to. Most likely, the sale was authorized by Bohemia Interactive, who published DayZ along with the ARMA series that it is originally based on.
— Dean Hall (@rocket2guns) June 19, 2014
The questionable ethics surrounding Early Access titles on Steam has been a hot-button topic as of late. Many feel that they represent a bad trend in the industry of offering unfinished products and then never fulfilling the promises made to purchasers. Others can point to games like DayZ and Kerbal Space Program which are very high quality products that offer a lot of gameplay for the price, despite being listed as Early Access.
We’ll find out how many more Early Access titles hit the Steam Summer Sale over the next few days. If you are in the camp that takes issue with the policy it seems like your only recourse is to vote with your wallet and not purchase these unfinished games.
- This article was updated on March 8th, 2018
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