Yesterday, posts started popping up on places like the ever-popular gaming forum NeoGAF that claimed to have the official PC specs for the upcoming zombie game Dying Light. These were noteworthy because they made the game's system requirements sound insane. We can all calm down, though, because they weren't accurate.
Posts like the one on NeoGAF weren't based on errant speculation, mind you. They drew their information from Dying Light's Steam page, which had been just been updated with the aforementioned insane-looking specs. The page has since been changed to reflect the real requirements, but here's a screenshot that GameSpot captured of the original specs:
What set people off in particular was the recommended 16 GB of RAM, which sounded beyond beefy and also unprecedented—even as a recommended setting. That's because it is unprecedented. Here are the real system requirements, which Techland sent over to me via email this morning.
Minimum:
OS: Windows® 7 64-bit / Windows® 8 64-bit / Windows® 8.1 64-bit
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-2500 @3.3 GHz / AMD FX-8320 @3.5 GHz
Memory: 4 GB RAM DDR3
Hard Drive: 40 GB available space
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560 / AMD Radeon™ HD 6870 (1GB VRAM)
Direct X®: Version 11
Sound: DirectX® compatible
Recommended:
OS: Windows® 7 64-bit / Windows® 8 64-bit / Windows® 8.1 64-bit
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4670K @3.4 GHz / AMD FX-8350 @4.0 GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM DDR3
Hard Drive: 40 GB available space
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 780 / AMD Radeon™ R9 290 (2GB VRAM)
Direct X: Version 11
Sound: DirectX® compatible
Techland also included these "additional notes":
Laptop versions of graphics cards may work but are NOT officially supported.
Windows-compatible keyboard, mouse, optional controller (Xbox 360 Controller for Windows recommended)
As is always the case with PC requirements, the company's official specs aren't set in stone either. Once PC gamers get their hands on his juicy new hunk of content, undoubtedly some will do so on systems that aren't technically optimized according to Techland's rules. And I'm willing to bet that some of them will find that the game still works.
Regardless: all us lovers of high-fidelity zombie-killing can breathe easy that the rumored 16 GB of RAM isn't actually a thing. And thank god it isn't. Specs like that are enough to make me want to exercise some "creative brutality."