Dean hall starts recruiting for new game studio RocketWerkz
He'd announced he was going to bump out of Bohemia & development of DayZ Standalone a while back, but he's finally taken the plunge. Creator and lead developer Rocket is no more for DayZ.
Not that it really matters. I've always had the feeling he had shit all to do with actual development of both the mod and standalone past a certain point. Just think the guy's heart wasn't in it.
The fact that he's starting up a new studio is laughable, however. I can't imagine signing on with a dude who abandoned his own game in alpha after the money had come in and expecting to turn out a finished product... ever. The mod is still technically in alpha and Standalone still suffers from the critical flaws that have existed since day 1 regarding zombie pathing, clunky controls, stability, and performance.
The best thing that could happen to Standalone is to enable modders the same access they had with the Arma 2 iteration. I suspect they'd make incredible strides lightyears ahead of the dev team, just like they did with the mod. Were it not for the amazing mod community, there would be no base building, no new maps, no trade system, no true crafting system, among countless other invaluable additions. There's a reason why most people still play the mod over Standalone, and why Epoch/Overpoch servers vastly outnumber Vanilla.
Regardless, Rocket was a shit leader and a flaky developer, so I think Standalone's progress and direction won't really change much. Maybe it will get better.
Until that happens, I'll still be waiting for H1Z1... Even though Smed said it'd be worse with less features than Standalone at Early Access release.