Terrifyingly popular Zombie Mod, DayZ, is of course getting a standalone version, with an Alpha launching this december - according to Dean 'Rocket' Hall, speaking at the Eurogamer Expo.

"It has to be out before the end of the year, not just because we've committed to it, but in order to achieve what we have to do. It has to be. There's no 'we hope it is' it has to be. And it's going to be cheap."

I'm guessing he wants to get the standalone version of Dayz out the door in order to compete with the upcoming WarZ, a game 'heavily' inspired by DayZ's popularity. Of WarZ, Dean Hall had this to say,

"Maybe what they're doing is not cool to me, but the way I look at it is what are my options? What could I do? I could stand up here and be very critical of anyone who does a clone copy of the game. What would that actually achieve other than making me look like a dick? It's not going to result in a better game."

So far, so gentlemanly. It will be interesting to see DayZ evolve from such an experimental mod, prone to sweeping changes in updates, to a more feature complete and fleshed out version, complete with a full development team behind it. Now we know a release date you can get practising in the mod version of DayZ to brush up on your zombie hunting skills.