The extremely popular Arma II mod sensation Day Z, is at last being given a shot at the big time.  The persistently open-world, zombie survival game is being untethered from its Arma II origins as Bohemia Interactive (the developers of Arma II), have today confirmed that they will be funding the full release of the mod, with Day Z creator Dean ‘Rocket’ Hall being appropriately hired as project lead.

On his Tumblr account, an understandably elated Dean Hall had this to say regarding the announcement:

“That’s right, this is actually happening - DayZ will be developed as a standalone game, with me as project lead, by Bohemia Interactive. This is the fairy-tale outcome for a mod that many would have said impossible four months ago.

Development and updates of the mod will continue in parallel with the development of the game, so anyone who is playing the mod now will be able to continue to do so. The project will follow the Minecraft development model; fast iterations with the community alpha available for a heavily discounted price.

I realize people will have many, many questions – but we wanted to let everyone know the announcement now. Over the coming weeks, these questions will be answered. The game will have it’s own site, www.dayzgame.com and the mod will continue at it’s present link.”

This, quite frankly is brilliant news.

I’ve deeply, deeply enjoyed the mod in its current form, but the general instability and server infrastructure issues that the mod frequently experiences should hopefully be eradicated as the game makes the leap into an independent, full release.

Great stuff indeed.