After nearly five years in development, DayZ has finally transitioned from Alpha to Beta back in November. So if you expected the same sort of story to play out during its journey from Beta to full release, I'm afraid you would be quite wrong as DayZ 1.0 has just officially launched onto Steam!

There doesn't appear to be a list of what exactly has changed between Beta and release, so if you're curious about what DayZ currently looks and plays like, you should check out the recently posted launch trailer. Have a gander:

If you know even a little bit about DayZ's history, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that the release version is both buggy and unfinished. It's significantly better than what we saw earlier in its lifespan, but it's blatantly obvious that despite being DayZ 1.0, there is still a lot of work to be done before it's well and truly finished.

Thankfully, you won't have to put your money on the line in order to see whether the newest version of DayZ is right for you. This would be because DayZ is currently running a free weekend, so if you're even remotely curious, you should head on over to Steam and give it a spin. The free weekend will last until December 17th, so you should be able to get a pretty good impression.

Have fun, and just remember, in DayZ some canned beans are often more valuable than human life!