If you’ve been under the assumption that the DayZ standalone was just around the corner or anxiously waiting for Dean Hall to finally give us a solid release date, I have some bad news. Well, relatively bad, because the only reason we’re still waiting for this game is so Hall and friends can make it amazing. After the game appeared on Steam, it looked like progress on the standalone was wrapping up nicely. Sadly, this is not the case. Details after the jump.

According to a post on Reddit by Dean Hall himself, where he confirmed they’re currently focused on optimization.

“Optimizing/Bugfixing Dedicated server.
This is why we are not out. We need performance

We think we need a minimum of 15 FPS will 50 players, 2000 zombies, and 25000 loot items. Our latest tests have all shown some runaway systems in the code we have to tidy up. The variable synchronization system that was developed for work with the network bubble, is checking the variables very often. We’re optimizing this. Also, there are many string comparisons. These have been refactored so references are used (lookup numbers) to speed up the process. things like animations etc… are generally recorded as strings – ArmA wasn’t build to handle very large numbers of things so this has been a large area of optimization.”

So there you go. Continue being patient — that’s all we can do — and know that they’re dedicated to ensuring this is the best zombie survival game they can possibly make. In the meantime, if you need some reading material, check out our list of reasons why you should be pumped for it.

Have a question? Feel free to ever-so-gently toss Adam an email, or follow him on Twitter and Bloody Disgusting.