In a manner of only three months, the hugely popular ArmA 2 mod, DayZ, has hit 1,000,000 unique users. It just hit 500,000 players less than a month ago.
The mod helped create a major resurgence for the game that it modifies, ArmA 2, as many gamers have only bought the 2010 game solely so they could play the mod. As a result, ArmA 2 is currently one of the most played and popular games on Steam. The mod itself is a free download, only requiring ArmA II: Operation Arrowhead, a 2010 expansion for ArmA 2, to run.
The mod and its success story is also an obvious influence on the upcoming The War Z. So with one million fans, what's next for DayZ? Well, if the mod's designer Dean Hall has anything to say about it, DayZ won't need Arma 2 for players to play his game. He recently told VG24/7, "I want to see it become a standalone game, following the Minecraft model of a low price point, but that will only work if we say that everyone is going to pay. In order for people to not feel ripped off we need to have a load of new content; so, things like base-building, tidying and cleaning up animations and add rag-doll physics as the like."
In addition to keeping track of unique users, the official DayZ website also keeps the total amount of time played between all users. At last count, between all the users, the total gameplay numbers over an entire millennium, at about 1220 years.