Is DayZ Cross-platform in 2022?

After the mod which goes by the same name got really popular on ARMA 2, DayZ was all set to get a stand-alone game in 2018. Ever since its entry into the gaming market, it has been revered as one of the most realistic and immersive survival experiences available in the gaming world today.

The story is set after an unknown extinction-level threat hit the human world. The game predominantly takes place in a fictional version of the Soviet Union, which has been dismantled into various smaller countries in our real world. The game primarily focuses on survival and other features. Still, the most fun part about the game is the multiplayer option.

So if you have friends who want to get on the Dayz trend, you could, except this one problem plagues the game: Cross-play functionality.

What is DayZ cross-platform?

Cross-platform gaming allows the players from a console or device to interact with the players from some other device or console which may or may not be from the same company or may or may not possess the same software or hardware capabilities.

The description should ring some alarm bells in your head; if some system has different specifications, it becomes tough to enable cross-play.

So simply put, if you want to play a game, like DayZ with your friends, for example, and if you are on the same consoles, then you are good to go.  But cross-play means when you play with your friend when he has a different device from you, and you’re still able to play the game together.

Is Day cross-platform?

No, DayZ hasn’t been a cross-platform game ever since its inception. This simply means if your friend doesn’t have the same console as you, then sadly, you won’t be able to play with him.

Although you might’ve had fun playing with your friends online, Bohemia Interactive never divided to put this functionality in the game; the reason isn’t that clear why they decided to not pursue this.

Suppose you have an Xbox and your friend has a PC or a Playstation. In that case, there is no way you could connect to each other, that’s just how the game was built, and there are a lot of reasons why this may be the case; we will take a look at them further and also discuss if there’s any way around it.

Will Dayz Be Cross-platform in the Future?

As of now (2022), there has been no official news from Bohemia Interactive about making the game a cross-platform title. Instead, if the player demands increase, the developers would like to stretch their horizons to Mobile and the Switch, which has been getting many new gamers lately.

It doesn’t make sense to make DayZ a cross-platform game now. Suppose Bohemia Interactive, for some reason, decided to release a patch or an update enabling cross-play. In that case, it will require a lot of new code to be written and not to mention the amount of money they’ll need to pull this off.

The reason why modern games don’t have cross-lay will be answered in the next section.

The real reason why Dayz isn’t cross-platform

Cross-play functionality makes sense for games like Fortnite and Minecraft as they are more or less not that big games; their core gameplay remains the same throughout, so it is easier to make the games allow cross-play with systems that have different software and hardware as well.

But even if you possessed the skill to make a game cross-play, which most modern game studios have nowadays, they still won’t add the cross-platform functionality to their games because it’ll cost them a lot of money and possibly a lot of time as well which could be well spent on other projects, we all know the cut-throat nature of the gaming industry.

Apart from that, even if some studios decided to pursue the cross-platform route, the companies don’t make it easy for the studios at all. Recently, There was a lot of backlash against Sony. It allegedly stopped NBA2K22 from going cross-platform and allowed different console players to come together and play.

Games like NBA2K are based on community values, and players want their friends alongside them in-game. Still, not everyone has the same console setup. The reason why Sony was allegedly disallowing the devs to enable cross-play is that they wanted royalty fees. Yes, you heard that right.

Apparently, big gaming companies require the studios to pay royalty fees for allowing players from different consoles to play without their own player base. Now call this selfishness or cutthroat competition; Microsoft and Sony are staunch competitors. From their point of view, it only makes sense to keep players on their consoles e no matter what.

That’s why most modern games don’t have cross-platform functionalities because that amount of money could be spent on bettering the game or for future projects. Also, Sony and Microsoft require you to pay for additional online privileges, making multiplayer even harder for most players.

Games like Fortnite, which got the cross-platform functionality got it really hard; the fams were angry at the console manufacturers for delaying the cross-platform functionality for Fortnite.

So just imagine, if a game as big as Fortnite had such a huge problem when going cross-platform, you could best believe smaller studios won’t like to go down that route.

Commonly Asked Questions

Is DayZ Cross-platform on the PS4 and PS5?

DayZ wasn’t released for the PS5, and as of now, there is no news of making it newer for the PS5 because the latest PlayStation, which is the PS5, has backward compatibility support, so you can basically just play the PS4 DayZ on your new PS5, and the game would run just fine.

Now that the game is running on the PS5 as well, you may be wondering if you can connect with PS4 players from your PS5 and vice-a-versa, and the answer is yes, you can do that, as it all happens on the server-side.

Is DayZ Cross-platform on the Xbox One and Xbox X/S?

DayZ wasn’t released for the Xbox X/S because these next-generation consoles don’t require that privilege as they are backward compatibles. The devs at Bohemia Interactive have also made it very clear that the game will be backward compatible on the Xbox X/S. You can also play the same save file from your older console.

That being said, this means the game is pretty much the same on both the Xbox generations, so they should be cross-platform at least in their console family, and the simple answer to that is, Yes.

If you are on an Xbox One and your friend is on an Xbox X/S, you can connect with them as, unlike before, these generations share the same servers.

Conclusion

DayZ is one of the best survival games out there and would’ve been even better if it had cross-platform functionality, which it doesn’t have for many reasons, which we discussed in this article. But at least you can play across generations with your friends.