H1Z1

Z1 Battle Royale is a battle royale game in which up to a hundred and fifty players compete against each other in a last man standing deathmatch. Players can choose to play solo, in a duo, or in groups of five, with the goal of being the final person or final team remaining.

Players start each match by parachuting in from a random location above the map. Once they land, they must search for a way to defend themselves. This can take the form of anything from grabbing a weapon and actively hunting other players, to hiding while other players kill one another. Vehicles are placed throughout the world, allowing players to chase down opponents or make a quick getaway.

Z1 Battle Royale was originally released on Steam's early access program on January 15, 2015, as H1Z1. Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, creator of the Battle Royale mod for Arma, was brought on. 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 had been split into two separate projects with their own dedicated development teams, with the game being rebranded as King of the Kill while the other became Just Survive. 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.

Z1 Battle Royale received "mixed or average" reviews according to Metacritic. By the start of 2017, the game has been a fixture in the top most played games on Steam. Although it predated Fortnite and PUBG: Battlegrounds in the Battle Royale genre, the game has not been able to maintain its position, ultimately losing a significant portion of the playerbase.

The game has been experiencing large number of bugs since 2015, which has led to many users leaving the game for other battle royale titles. In August 2017, a Combat Update which changed spray patterns for many of the weapons and tweaked movement has been released which also resulted in backlash from the game's users.