DayZ creator Dean Hall on The War Z fiasco

The War Z's abrupt launch and subsequent removal on Steam prompted a strong reaction from the community over the Foundation Release's strange name, missing features, and misleading Steam description.

on Steam prompted a strong reaction from the community over the Foundation Release's strange name, missing features, and misleading Steam description. (The War Z is still buyableon Hammerpoint's website.) Executive Producer Sergey Titov gave us his responseto the ordeal, but DayZ creator Dean "Rocket" Hall (save for this tweet) was quiet. Breaking his silence more directly in a Reddit postyesterday, Hall described his feelings on the issue.

"I've been pretty depressed about the whole situation," he wrote. "From a personal standpoint, this whole 'saga' of the development made me seriously question if I wanted to be involved in the industry, and I gave serious thought to cutting my losses and not being involved in the project."

The most recent project updatefor the standalone version of DayZ—which is also labeled a "Foundation Release"—stated that the game's tentative 2012 release window could be pushed to next year to give the team more time for development. In his Reddit post, Hall said the crush of information requests over both DayZ's progress and his thoughts on The War Z became a little too much to handle.

"I've been getting hammered by a massive amount with requests for information about DayZ's release, interviews, and my reactions to this and that, but for my own sanity, I retreated and have kept to myself," he explained. "Right now, I'm just at home doing bits and pieces on DayZ's development. The rest of the DayZ team is doing the same. I realize that I went back on my word about releasing an update, and I instead went back into my shell for a bit last week. I'll come out when the dust is all settled."