14 DAY TRIAL // DayZ's standalone edition did really great at its debut at the start of this week, selling 175K copies during the first 24 hours, in spite of developers warning against people rushing in.
Bohemia Interactive claims that the product is in an early alpha state and that it's more of an open development release, being devoid of many of the features intended for the final game.
Unfortunately, a security vulnerability in the alpha code has already surfaced. The bug was due to the ARMA code that was used for the game, some of which isn't required for the new DayZ.
The development team decided that the best solution would be to wipe all existing characters from their servers, and have everyone start anew.
The newly found vulnerability offered players the chance to create items, which is exactly what some of the testers were doing, as reported by IncGamers.
As such, Bohemia decided not to announce the glitch or the fix, in order to prevent it being done on a global scale, and to avoid having the exploiters find a way to leave the items on the ground for later.
Dean Hall, designer of the original DayZ mod, warned that “important updates like this WILL attract database wipes during the alpha process.”
He went on to point out that, much like other software development processes, these kinds of vulnerabilities will still be identified and patched in the future, in order to prevent crashes and other issues that may arise.
He closed his post by stating the team's policy is to be “suitably vague” about the specifics concerning these security measures.
As Bohemia warned at the start of the Steam Early Access page for Dayz, the alpha is intended for hardcore fans only and will be more of an opportunity to witness the game growing than an adequate gameplay experience.
It's also good to see the developers taking swift and decisive action with this type of unexpected surprises.