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H1Z1
H1Z1
Released Feb. 28th, 2018
Published by: Daybreak Game Company
Developed by: Daybreak Game Company
Details
H1Z1 is a free-to-play battle royale game developed and published by Daybreak Game Company. The game's development began after the original H1Z1 was spun off into two separate projects in early 2016: H1Z1: Just Survive and H1Z1: King of the Kill. The games were further split as separate projects in October 2017, with Just Survive dropping the H1Z1 name, and King of the Kill becoming simply H1Z1.

After three years of being in early access for Microsoft Windows, H1Z1 officially released as a free-to-play game in February 2018. It was later released for the PlayStation 4 in August 2018, and will be released for the Xbox One at a later date.

[section title="Development"]
The game was originally released on Steam's early access program on January 15, 2015. At release, the game suffered from numerous technical issues, such as players reporting that they could not login to their account or enter any active server. A new bug, which made all servers go offline, was also introduced to the game after the developer released a patch to fix other problems. Despite the unstable launch, John Smedley, CEO of Daybreak Game Company, announced that the game had sold over a million copies by March 2015.

In February 2016, it was announced by Daybreak that the game originally known as H1Z1 had been split into two separate projects with their own dedicated development teams, subtitled Just Survive and King of the Kill. Later that year, it was announced that development of the console versions were paused in order to focus on the Windows version of the game, which was given an official release date of September 20, 2016. However, a week prior release, the game's executive producer stated that due to many features remaining unfinished by then, the game would remain in early access until further notice. As a compromise, the game received a large update on September 20, including many of the features intended for the official release.

A televised tournament for the game, titled H1Z1: Fight for the Crown, aired in April 2017 on The CW. In October 2017, it was announced that the game would be dropping its King of the Kill subtitle, becoming known as simply H1Z1. An invitational tournament was held during TwitchCon at the Long Beach Convention Center the same month. Additionally in October 2017, the "H1Z1 Pro League" was announced, which was a partnership between Daybreak Games and Twin Galaxies to create a sustainable, professional eSports league for the game.

The game was fully released out of early access on February 28, 2018, with updates to scoring, combat, weapons, gameplay, UI a new gamemode, Auto Royale. The update also launched "Season 1", introducing a new updated scoring system that rewards players who get kills and place well in matches consistently. A week after release, it was announced that the game would be going back to free-to-play. It was released in early access for the PlayStation 4 on May 22, 2018, gaining over ten million players in over a month, and was officially released on August 7, 2018. The game features a seasonal battle pass option that offers character cosmetics.