Dean Hall will leave DayZ behind to start his own studio

DayZ creator Dean Hall is planning to leave developer Bohemia Interactive, to return to New Zealand and start his own game studio. After the DayZ mod for Arma II exploded in popularity back in 2012, Bohemia hired creator Hall to develop a standalone version of the zombie survival game. This alpha build of the standalone recently launched on Steam and has been selling rather well. But now Hall has told Eurogamer that he plans to leave development of the game to the rest of his team, and go back to creating his own studio. Hall will continue to work on DayZ until Bohemia no longer needs him which may be until the end of the year. But as Hall notes, he originally planned to leave Bohemia before now. "Originally I wasn't going to do this year, but it would be stupid not to, and it would be unfair to the community," he notes. "I have to be on the project as long as it's important to. Whether that role is as the leader, whether that role is in a more creative sense... But at a certain point there will be diminishing returns." Hall says that the Prague-based Bohemia "isn't my home," and notes that he would like to start his own studio and create a new game. "I can't - and nor should I - turn around and say and say 'this is how we do it,'" he adds. "I don't even know how their country works, their labour laws or anything. And, you know, I miss home." Hall is currently exploring other ideas of online multiplayer games in the same vein as DayZ.