Dean Hall, creator of DayZ and the project lead on DayZ Standalone, has left Bohemia Interactive to start his own studio. He’s been quite public about his intentions to strike off on his own but it’s still a significant moment for the developer and the game.
Hall’s moved back to his native New Zealand to start his studio, Rocketwerkz.
He’s currently advertising staff positions on Twitter.
Back in March Hall announced that he’d be leaving Bohemia before the end of the year, saying “I’m really good at risk-taking and making other people take risks, I’ve always been good at that in my life [… but] eventually, you don’t want the guy telling you to go over the top and get through. So at some point I’ll be a disaster for the project, at least in a leadership role.”
He revealed in June that he had a number of game ideas he wanted to work on. Though, he would only reveal that one of them was a tycoon game.
Another reason for leaving Bohemia is that Hall felt he was “treading water”: “It was never a permanent thing,” he told us in June. “I was supposed to go for six months, this is my third year. It’s always rolling on by a few months, so you’re always just about to go home, and that’s exhausting.”
Hall tweeted earlier today that he was looking to make hires for his new studio, RocketWerkz:
Looking for programmers, artists, etc… for my new studio @RocketWerkz. These roles initially based Dunedin, NZ. Email [email protected]
— Dean Hall (@rocket2guns) December 9, 2014
Hall’s been silent besides that tweet and his site’s currently a blank page.