10 Video Game Betas That Put You Off Full Games
6. DayZ Standalone
Originally a mod for Bohemia Interative's ARMA II, DayZ drew a surprising amount of popularity for its unique take on zombie survival. Making use of a more minimalistic gameplay style, players could be helped and hindered by players as they survived the infested fictional landscape of Chernarus.
Naturally, the developer was impressed with Dean Hall's efforts and hired him to work on a standalone version of the game. Eventually, DayZ Standalone would arrive on Steam Early Access and a protracted production cycle ensued.
As one of the longest running betas of the last decade, the community expected DayZ to drastically expand, making full use of the developer's resources to provide one of the better survival gaming experiences available. As time dragged on however, other releases began to overtake it in both scope and features. Add to that a fiddly, often inaccessible set of controls and interest started to wane over time.
DayZ would take years to make it out of beta and when it was finally released in alpha state in 2018 and 2019, the game fans got hardly resembled a complete product. It couldn't measure up to the bar of the games that spawned it, let alone the survival genre. Most players just weren't interested and left it alone.