When two people argue, the third one is happy… and the fourth one is happy. That’s probably what the developers of the two survival games DayZ and Icarus thought. While the entire gaming world is upset and disappointed by the big drama surrounding The Day Before, the two studios are jumping on it with a Steam sale. And with a huge wink.
The Day After: DayZ und Icarus im Steam-Sale
The two studios Bohemia Interactive and RocketWerkz are joining forces for this cooperation and releasing the survival bundle The Day After on Steam. Until December 21st you can get DayZ and Icarus with a 33 percent discount for around 50 dollars.
Click here to go directly to the sale bundle
Who is DayZ worthwhile for? The zombie survival game originally started as a mod for Arma 2, but was later developed as a standalone title in Early Access.
In an open world overrun by zombies you fight for your survival: food, water, equipment, weapons – all of this determines how far you get. By the way, the game doesn’t give you a story, you write the story yourself. Encounters with other players can also help, as they can throw a big wrench in your plans at any time.
Despite the lack of refinement, DayZ is a real highlight among hardcore survival games and can probably best fill the hole left by The Day Before.
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DayZ shows off the new content in update 1.21, including crossbows and medieval armor
Who is Icarus worthwhile for? The survival game with a focus on crafting comes from Dean Hall, the inventor of DayZ. Instead of fighting against zombies in the post-apocalypse, this time the players end up on alien planets. Here too you have to survive and find resources, build a dwelling and assert yourself against the alien fauna.
Alone or with up to eight players in co-op, you can develop increasingly complex technologies and face the challenges of extraterrestrial worlds. When it launched in December 2021, the survival game received a lot of criticism, not least because of its technical performance. Two years later, the community’s mood has improved significantly. A full 83 percent of reviews from the last 30 days are positive.
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Icarus: Release trailer shows the harsh nature of the survival game from DayZ creator
Not the first swipe
Although the Steam page doesn’t officially state this, the name “The Day After” is clearly an allusion to the flop of the hotly anticipated survival game The Day Before. The sale also went live on December 12th, one day after the controversial game was removed from Steam.
This is not the first swipe at the now defunct studio Fntastic. Back on December 11th, the DayZ developers published a post on X (formerly Twitter) celebrating the 10th anniversary of their game.
Link to Twitter content
Why is this mocking? The post came just hours after the official announcement about Fntastic’s closure. The developers were also very inspired by the layout of the original posting. Players received the action with mixed feelings.
Link to Twitter content
This time, of course, behind the wink there is more than just pure mockery of a failed game, but also a clever marketing strategy. With the Steam sale, the developers are trying to catch up with the disappointed players that The Day Before left behind.
What do you think of the campaign? Are you excited about the sale and will you grab it straight away? Are you perhaps already long-time fans of the games? Or do you think that the developers are going too far with their mockery and shouldn’t be so happy about the failure of the survival game The Day Before? Feel free to write us your opinion in the comments!