H1Z1 Players Log Out in Droves When the Sun Goes Down (in-Game)

Developer Daybreak has shared the results of a new player data report for PC zombie MMO H1Z1 that reveals players log out en masse when the in-game sun goes down. In essence, H1Z1 players are afraid of the dark. Daybreak president John Smedley revealed the information in a post recently on Reddit.

"We had a very interesting report run just now. It shows a much higher percentage of people log out when it gets to night," he said. "We play the game too, and we've tuned it as best we could to be fun and not too dark, but the data is quite stark."

In response to this feedback, Smedley said Daybreak will change the parameters for "a couple" H1Z1 servers to make them daytime-only. For all the other servers, where day turns to night just like in real life, Daybreak will also "make adjustments to night itself," though he didn't share any specifics.

Smedley says he is personally a big advocate for playing H1Z1 during the virtual evening--but he can't argue with the data. "I love the night, but data is data and it's you, our players, doing the logging out when it gets dark," he said. "You are literally voting with your feet on this issue."

H1Z1 is available now on Steam Early Access ($20), where it's already sold over 1 million copies since its release earlier this year. The game is also coming to PlayStation 4, though a release date for that version has not been announced.

Daybreak recently added female character models to H1Z1, something we spoke with art director Sebastian Strzalkowski about as part of an in-depth interview.