I've been following the development of Dayz with some reservations for a while now. I have logged about 80 hours in the alpha so even if Dayz never reaches a full release I won't feel cheated as I've got my money's worth out of it.

However it seems to me that Dayz has entered development hell a while ago and the lauded 0.6 update doesn't realy give me confidence in the project. The phrase 'when it's ready' reminds me of the Duke Nukem development saga. and we all know how that game ended up.

Also feature creep is a thing. Every update so far has a massive list of systems and Items added to a game wich has serious flaws in its basic gameplay. To change the actual engine at this point seems to me like a bad idea as it will create a whole slew of new bugs with all systems that are implemented in the game so far (this might be why the update is taking so long to be released).

I hope I will be proven wrong about all off this but I'm afraid Dayz might never reach a "finished" state.

Welcome to the wonderful world of early access.

Feature creep, is indeed a concern, but the thing I wonder about is incentive. What incentive do they have to "finish" day z? Or rust, or H1Z1? Why make that final push and polish it off when people continue to buy your buggy mess?

I'm probably the biggest "whale" for survival games. I bought DayZ after watching some youtube videos. Then I bought Rust, 7 Days to Die, Beasts of Prey, ARK, Savage Lands, Stranded Deep, Miscreated, etc etc.

To say, "Why isn't this one done?" It's the problem with Early Access. The devs are allowed to release these games and HOPEFULLY get funded to the end, but if the games don't create content, then they fail. All of the games I listed add guns, bases, new monsters, etc. But they fail to miss one thing. Content. Story.

Give me a reason to come back and I will. As for now, after hundreds of dollars, i've learned my lesson and refuse to buy them.

There also is a ps4 release planned wich seems like a weird fit to me.

@upperdecker: Amen. Rust seems to be getting a bit of a revival but man if this genre isn't just tainted with uncertainty and eventual disappointment at the realization that we wasted money on an exciting idea and not much more.

No, it's out already regardless of what they want to call it.

Why would they ever bother finishing the game since they are already making a ton of money off it?

It's a real shame. I must have played about 250hrs of the mod, it was at times the most tense and exciting game I've ever played. To see that there has been no progress with the standalone is annoying but not unexpected. From the start the standalone seemed like it would be a mess, what with the terrible engine choice and with Rocket leaving (as much as I think he's an idiot it can't have helped).

Getting it finished really isn't the point at the moment, just getting it to the level of the mod would be a miracle.

Stuck in beta more like. Development hell as common nomenclature means a movie project has circulated without entering production, or perhaps even pre-production; DayZ is publicly available.

Is there even ONE early access survival game that got fully released yet?

The problem with DayZ and Rust and all these other 'survival' games that copied the Minecraft formula is that how do we define finished? All of these games have been released to the public mid development, and all of the games have had tonnes of stuff added to them, but the thing is they will continue to have stuff added to them 'til the devs run out of money. People have had plenty of fun with all these apparently 'unfinished' games and I don't think the early access tag should take away from that.

@ydross:The only one that i can think of is State of Decay, but that really isn't the same thing and doesn't support mutliplayer (If that game did, it would rule the planet). H1Z1 (Not the king of the hill version) is pretty close i guess and has some story stuff in it, but very very limited. I think they are more focused on that kind of the hill version as it's picking up massive momentum on twitch.

@rafaelfc: Funny story about a couple titles. There was a game called The Stomping Land which i bought. That game raised like 100k on kickstarter or something then a bunch of money on steam early access. Rumor is the main guy ditched the studio with the money. Another game called Beasts of Prey (both of these are open world dinosaur games like ARK) picked up a bunch of Stomping Land's coders and came out with a update on Beasts of Prey, then that game was abandoned as well when ARK came out.

I don't really know the answer to when one of these games can be called, done. As one person said, what is the end game? Minecraft kind of has an ending i guess with the dragon at the end? But the point of these games is to keep playing and surviving, so is a end even possible? Also what would the ending be? If 50 people joined a server and all of the sudden somebody "wins" what happens? Do that player move onto another harder server? Server ends as somebody has conquered it?

I am addicted to these games, but don't know why. If anybody plays any of these and is lookin for a friend to play them with, you can add me to steam ROGamingRyan

@ydross: Don't Starve is the definition of finishing and releasing an Early Access Survival game well.

They had a roadmap that slated a release in 2016. I can't find it anymore. I guess they've added more malarkey? I remember when they added blood types, I thought that was overkill. I can't imagine what inane BS they got in the game now.

I also remember when Arma 3 came out shortly after the standalone release and it ran and controlled waaaay better than DayZ. Why didn't they make it on the Arma 3 engine?! UGH! I want to scoot around on my butt dammit. And wouldn't you know it, there's a more fun DayZ-esque mod called Breaking Point for Arma 3. I wish I wasn't banned from it. :(

I've been tuning in to the occasional patch notes for DayZ to see what on earth is going on, i'm sure the additions and changes they've been making feel significant to the developers, especially for the game engine they've had to use, but it feels like all the technical issues the game launched with are still there and that has been the biggest detractor in this game its entire life.
The mod had its issues, and it was the opportunities a standalone version offered which got people excited, but it didn't seem to make any difference on the technical side, the upcoming engine change could be the key to that but we'll see, they've added a ton of items, animations and locations but it's all still tied together by terrible performance and network issues.

My foray into survival games started and finished with DayZ, it will take a lot from this game or another to pull me back in.

@andrack: hahaha, i remember the blood types. That part was so weird! They went that indepth about blood types, as zombies were running through walls and you may or may not be able to connect to the game, lol.

You'd be surprised at how little there is.

@crazybagman

Didn't they take out the zombies?

Remember when this was coming to consoles? Would love to see it, never actually happening.

It's just a continuous beta, with this kind of game you can count it as released; nothing will drastically change when it finally does come out other than a short burst in sales.