Keep DayZ 17+ ESRB rated
DayZ is rated M for Mature 17+ by the ESRB with Blood, Strong Language, and Violence. Also includes Users Interact. This is a first-/third-person shooter in which players fight for survival in a post-apocalyptic world. Players explore wasteland surroundings, loot human survivors for supplies and weapons, and attack and kill zombies and humans. Players use pistols, rifles, machine guns, axes, and knives to kill other characters in frenetic combat. Splashes of blood appear when zombies or survivors are struck/shot, and several environments contain large splatters of blood.
This, has been the ESRB rating for DayZ since 2018, when it was officially released on Steam for us all to play. 
We write this as longtime DayZ players, server owners, and modders who care deeply about the game and its future.
DayZ has always been an M-rated title. That rating exists for a reason: to clearly communicate the experience players should expect. DayZ is a harsh, realistic survival game built around violence, bloodshed, and mature themes. These elements are not incidental, they are fundamental to the game’s identity. That is why it has been rated M for Mature (17+).
The ESRB M rating explicitly allows content such as violence, gore, and sexually suggestive themes. Recently, however, community mods have begun to be removed or banned for content that clearly falls within the same M-rated standards already present in the base game. This has been happening quietly, through vague enforcement and unclear rules, creating confusion and concern across the community.
If content appropriate for an M-rated game is no longer acceptable in mods, then the M rating itself loses its meaning. DayZ begins drifting away from the experience it was designed to be, and toward something safer, softer, and more restrictive, a direction none of us agreed to when we chose this game.
Mods are not forced on anyone. They are optional by design. Server owners decide what content to run, and players choose which servers to join. Adults are knowingly choosing adult content in an adult-rated game. This system has worked for years.
We are not asking for anything extreme, illegal, or inappropriate. We are asking for consistency.
Holding community mods to a stricter standard than the base game itself does not make sense, and it actively harms the people who have kept DayZ alive for over a decade. The modding community is one of the primary reasons DayZ continues to thrive. Removing mods for being “too mature” sends a clear message that the game is moving away from its roots.
We do not want a watered-down DayZ.
We do not want unclear or selectively enforced rules.
What we’re asking:
Keep DayZ fully M-rated in practice, not just on the store page
Allow mods that fall within the ESRB M rating to remain available
Clearly acknowledge that mature content is acceptable in an adult-rated game
Trust adult players to make informed choices for themselves
DayZ has never been comfortable, safe, or censored and that is exactly why we love it.
Please don’t change that by slowly censoring the very elements that define the game.
Alex Cookland Contact the author of the petition