H1Z1 players are afraid of the dark

H1Z1 is a zombie survival game where players forage in the woods, cobble together weapons, forge alliances and generally attempt to kill one another by any means possible. For a game this ruthless, it's somewhat comforting to find human frailties coming to the surface. Take, for instance, that H1Z1's playerbase is afraid of the dark.

Daybreak Game Company's president Jon Smedley went to Reddit today to announce that whenever the H1Z1 servers, which feature a full day and night cycle, roll around to the wee hours after dinner but before breakfast — otherwise known as night — players log off in droves.

"A much higher percentage of people log out when it gets to night," Smedly said. "We play the game too, and we've tuned it as best we could to be fun and not too dark, but the data is quite stark. We are considering experimenting for a few days with no nighttime on the core PvP servers (hardcore would still have it)."

Famously, another zombie survival game had its own issue with darkness. When DayZ first broke onto the scene there were times when you could hardly see your Makarov in front of your face. Dropping a flare was one sure way to find your way out of the inky blackness, but another was to search for Arma 2 servers listed as "daytime only." It seems that H1Z1 will soon be experimenting with a similar solution.

"Personally I love the night," Smedly said, "but data is data and it's you, our players doing the logging out when it gets dark. You are literally voting with your feet on this issue. We may also end up with a compromise; daytime only servers. But we may still do the experiment with all the core PvP servers to see what you think. If we try it, it will only be for a few days (although if you like it a lot we could keep it)."

Smedly is taking feedback on Reddit right now, if you're so inclined. But despite what fans say, we all know one thing to be true: The night is dark and full of terrors.

You have been warned.