Update: A Rocky Start For The War Z

Karloff

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Oct 19, 2009
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Update: A Rocky Start For The War Z



"We also want to extend our apologies to all players who misread information about game features." Wait, what?

The War Z [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/118614-Zombies-Eat-the-World-in-The-War-Z-MMO], Hammerpoint Interactive's entrant to the zombie survival horror MMO genre, is off to a very rocky start; so troubled, in fact, that its description on Steam had to be updated, after gamers complained that they'd been sold a sack of zombie giblets instead of the game they'd been promised. Hammerpoint's Sergey Titov was quick to step in with an apology, saying "we also want to extend our apologies to all players who misread information about game features."

Yep; it's "if this isn't false advertising, I don't know what is." [http://forums.thewarz.com/showthread.php?79251-Steam-purchase-page-issues] Ultimately it wasn't the lack of polish but the lack of transparency on the development team's part that caused friction. People - like the Reddit commentator who created the graphic seen here from the Steam description page - believe what they bought just isn't what was advertised.

Hammerpoint has rejoinders for many of the complaints. No, Hammerpoint says, it's not an Alpha or a Beta build; it's something called a Foundation Release, which has many - but not all - of the features Hammerpoint wants to implement. Yes, Hammerpoint says, the Steam description needs to be updated, and in fact this has already been done. Unfortunately it included items, like the skill trees, which Hammerpoint had hoped to have available for release, but in the end wasn't able to pull off.

"I'm sure there'll be people who will look into small details and will say 'no I was mislead,'" said Titov to GameSpy [http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/the-war-z/1226980p1.html] "where in fact they imagined something to themselves without checking details first. I'm sure that Steam have its refund policies that should handle those situations."

Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5969687/war-z-developer-on-steam-clusterfck-you-misread-the-description]

Update: Calling the premature launch "a mistake," it seems that The War Z has been temporarily pulled from the Steam store, pending "confidence in a new build." Players who have already purchased The War Z and wish to keep playing may do so, but for those who are not satisfied with this purchase are urged to submit a ticket to handy refund guide [https://support.steampowered.com/newticket.php].


Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5969836/the-war-z-removed-from-steam]

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fix-the-spade

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Feb 25, 2008
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Mass refund demands on Steam?

If enough people yell loud enough it'll happen...

More to the point, how did this lump even get a Steam release in the first place?
 

ActionDan

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Jun 29, 2009
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The sheer amount of hate coming from the players is astounding, and completely justified. Especially when their forums is like the Wild West, people being banned for merely mentioning a possible fault in the game.

And entire thread dedicated to pointing out some of the obvious flaws (In a well mannered and helpful way, not "Lol your game sucks") Got the thread deleted and most of the posters Banned for it. The moderators are bunch of children, and someone needs to get their shit together.
 

Shinsei-J

Prunus Girl is best girl!
Apr 28, 2011
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Misread my ass, lies,
lies and treachery!

[sub]just someone let them know the world hates them... please...[/sub]
 

Vanquishuer

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Mar 5, 2009
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Misreading is the act of adding content from the imagination after reading something.
Telling the people that they have something in the game, and it isn't there, IS false advertising.
 

The Artificially Prolonged

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Jul 15, 2008
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Well all evidence points to the contary Hammerpoint and I'm no expert but find unlikely that a lot of people misread the small details given that they where not told these small details and in fact they where told something else entirely.
 

fwiffo

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Sep 12, 2011
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"Foundation Release" eh? That's cute. Sounds like a piece of shit trying to ride the dayZ train. I'm glad they're getting this kind of response.
 

cerebus23

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ActionDan said:
The sheer amount of hate coming from the players is astounding, and completely justified. Especially when their forums is like the Wild West, people being banned for merely mentioning a possible fault in the game.

And entire thread dedicated to pointing out some of the obvious flaws (In a well mannered and helpful way, not "Lol your game sucks") Got the thread deleted and most of the posters Banned for it. The moderators are bunch of children, and someone needs to get their shit together.
I have been thru this having done a ton of beta testing over the years, i done some where you could discuss things pretty openly within reason, and others where anything and everything got you modded or banned outright. Tho what got me banned was calling out an atari eu forum mod that was anti pc and put out false information constantly that she had claimed as insider.
 

ActionDan

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cerebus23 said:
ActionDan said:
The sheer amount of hate coming from the players is astounding, and completely justified. Especially when their forums is like the Wild West, people being banned for merely mentioning a possible fault in the game.

And entire thread dedicated to pointing out some of the obvious flaws (In a well mannered and helpful way, not "Lol your game sucks") Got the thread deleted and most of the posters Banned for it. The moderators are bunch of children, and someone needs to get their shit together.
I have been thru this having done a ton of beta testing over the years, i done some where you could discuss things pretty openly within reason, and others where anything and everything got you modded or banned outright. Tho what got me banned was calling out an atari eu forum mod that was anti pc and put out false information constantly that she had claimed as insider.
Wow, that is truly pathetic on the game developers part. But I think the WarZ dev's have hit a new level when it comes to dickish behaviour, banned people when asked for refunds and blacklisting their Paypal accounts is just absolutely astoundingly bad taste, I hope, nay, I PRAY that they get fired, or that the company itself crashes and burns to the ground
 

felixader

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Feb 24, 2008
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I think it is quite obvious by now that they hadn't actually been developing the game when DAY Z became popular but that they started development when it happened so.

And my god, threatening people with international blacklisting customers who wanted refunds is just not something to fuck with. In this age it is simply a thread to ones quality of life!

This company really needs to get someones elbow into their side. And Valve really needs to rethink how they are doing their business.
 

dragongit

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Feb 22, 2011
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during it's development I thought the game might be fun. Some sort of open world Zombie shooter, maybe more polished then Day Z. Funny how a mod for a game turns out better then one fully developed as a stand alone. I thankfully have not bought into this game, having read the reviews and TBs testiment. I believe every single customer should have their money refund. I know valve doesn't want that, but seriously screw that notion, if Valve wants to show loyalty to their customers, they will not only refund, but counter ban the developer or publisher from doing any more steam games. It shouldn't be too hard since it seems they don't have any other games anyway.
 

BeerTent

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May 8, 2011
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I haven't bought the game, but my Roomie has played it vicariously through YouTube. It's my understanding that WarZ has been in development longer than Day Z and they've had a full team on it? Talk about fucking horse-shit. This blemish-on-a-resume wouldn't be a "Foundation release" if that were the case.
 

Bindal

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piscian said:
SInitially everyone was getting refunds but they changed the TOS so now if you launch the game you have to agree to not ask for a refund.
Is that even legal? As far as I am aware, if I pay for a product and it isn't as advertised. How "as advertised" is defined is obviously a subjective matter. In this case, it at least originally was CLEARLY 'false advertising' and hence, asking for a refund is legal - no matter what the TOS say.
And even now, you buy an early alpha (at best), which is nowhere mentioned on the store-page. So, once again, you pay for a product you don't recieve and with that, you can ask for a refund.

I am pretty sure that DayZ won't be any better as stand-alone than it is now as mod - but it is pretty safe to say that they at least are going to say "this is an alpha/beta you are buying. IT IS NOT COMPLETE AND MIGHT NOT WORK CORRECTLY!". If they sell said Alpha/Beta (and doing it similar to Minecraft).
 

Vivi22

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Karloff said:
"I'm sure there'll be people who will look into small details and will say 'no I was mislead,'" said Titov to GameSpy [http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/the-war-z/1226980p1.html] "where in fact they imagined something to themselves without checking details first.
They imagined features that weren't in the game? What are they? Orks who believed their imagined description so hard it showed up on the Steam page for the game?

Had they simply owned up to doing something stupid I'd imagine things would be going a bit better for them. Sure, people would still be mad, but not as mad as when they're being told that it's their problem and they either misread or imagined features and didn't properly do their homework when they read company created descriptions which outright lied about the available features. Honestly, if I were Valve I'd take them off of Steam and give refunds to anyone who asked.

EDIT: Huh, just found a Forbes article talking about it. Looks like they might have ripped a bunch of assets from another game as well. I don't think it's one they own, but I'm not 100% sure.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/12/19/allegations-of-false-advertising-hound-the-war-z-release-on-steam/
 

Lono Shrugged

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I heard they were aiming for Christmas, I figured it would get pushed back with maybe a few pre-orders. Seems to me like they kicked it out the door at the last second and thought "If Minecraft can release an unfinished buggy game so can we" This is hopfully going to be a bit of a watershed for reminding people that unfinished buggy mods do not a game make. When I saw the trailer for this yesterday I thought "Yeeeaaaah, I'll stick to Day Z." buggy and unfinished but at least it's free
 
Apr 28, 2008
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You guys, Sergey Titov is one of the two programmers who made Big Rigs. I repeat, the developer of this game made Big Rigs.

Avoid this game like the fucking plague people.
 

AzrealMaximillion

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BeerTent said:
I haven't bought the game, but my Roomie has played it vicariously through YouTube. It's my understanding that WarZ has been in development longer than Day Z and they've had a full team on it? Talk about fucking horse-shit. This blemish-on-a-resume wouldn't be a "Foundation release" if that were the case.
The WarZ has definitely not been in development before DayZ.

At least not comepletely. It was known as the War Inc. You're probably seen ads for it and jgnored them because they looked like crap. After DayZ made its successful debut on the internet Hammerpoint just put a paltry zombie skin on the War Inc and made the WarZ. Its a blatant cash grab that people are falling for because they don't know the history of Hammerpoint.
 

dragongit

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Feb 22, 2011
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*snort* I'd just like to point out, that there was a really angry customer who altered the WarZ wiki page regarding Titov here. http://www.twzwiki.com/view/Sergey_Titov