After spending half a decade in Early Access, DayZ has finally entered into beta testing on Steam. It’s still in Early Access but finally utilizing the new game engine and having an upgraded gameplay experience that makes the network optimization a lot better, the zombies a lot more tolerable, and the gameplay smoother.

The news comes courtesy of a post over on the DayZ Steam page, where there’s news that the game is finally entering into beta testing. And yes, this means that gamers had been paying for access to a game that has stayed in alpha since 2013.

The most important beta features have been rolled out across a developer update video, where they cover what’s been updated, what’s been improved and what’s on the horizon.

The old 0.62 version has been moved over to the old branch, so now every new iteration of the game will be running on the new engine from 0.63 onward.

The new update also adds some of the most anticipated features for DayZ, including the ability to build your own base, better implementation for vehicle support, better AI improvements for the infected and the animals, as well as custom player-run servers, and modding support for those who want to modify the game in the exact same way that Arma 2 was modded to run DayZ.

They also announced that the price for DayZ will not be changing and that the game will still be available for $34.99 while it’s now in beta.

I don’t know if people are still interested in a realistic zombie survival simulator given how many clones have popped up in the last five years, but if you were interested in the game you can learn more about the update by hitting up the game’s Steam store page.