Day Z mod to go standalone

The Day-Z mod has been a really interesting one for PC gamers. Perhaps the first true zombie survival game to hit the market, making other zombie games like Dead Island and Left 4 Dead (2) look like child’s play. The mod has propelled ArmA 2 to prominence.

In order to play Day-Z gamers have had to spend money on acquiring the ArmA 2 game with the Operation Arrowhead expansion pack. However, all of you that picked up ArmA 2 and the expansion pack in the Steam Summer Sale (or before it), may now feel annoyed. Day-Z’s creator Dean Hall plans to break off from just being a mod, and intends to go standalone.

The game will probably arrive before Christmas, but for that to happen it requires Day-Z creator Dean Hall successfully thashing out an agreement with ArmA 2 makers Bohemia Interactive. This will probably involve Day-Z licensing the ArmA 2 engine, since if the game is to be ready in time for Christmas there is no way a totally new engine could be developed in time.

“We’re really on borrowed time,” he said. “I want to see it become a standalone game, following the Minecraft model of a low price point, but that will only work if we say that everyone is going to pay, and in order for people to not feel ripped off we need to have a load of new content; so, things like base-building, tidying and cleaning up animations and add ragdoll physics as the like.”

For those of you that have played Day-Z, you have probably experienced just how buggy it can be, not to mention how poor some of the animations are. The game needs a major clean up and a lot of optimisations if it is to hit the shelves as a finished standalone retail product.

There’s no word on what will happen to those who bought ArmA 2 specifically for Day-Z. You will probably have to purchase the standalone game to play, ending up with a copy of ArmA 2 you will probably never play again.

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