How to Get Your War Z Refund From Steam
- Thread starter MikeWehner
- Start date
I was thinking about buying it but when I saw the "buy with credit" or whatever it was, I changed my mind that instant.
This is a real sign of the times, that people now think it's "generous" to do what was pretty standard customer service not so long ago.balberoy said:
Yeah, it actually was. The description of the game promised certain things that didn't actually exist in the game. It's like a car dealer selling you car saying that the engine was a V8, but it actually only had four cylinders.
I'm not sure why Valve/Steam should be praised here, after all, they were the ones who allowed this false advertising on their service in the first place.
Awesome, I'll have to do this. I haven't been bashing Valve, though I did write a message about the game as Thorley23 on the War Z forum. This game was a complete lie as far as I'm concerned to be honest. Being touted as an RPG, in the RPG section, I was expecting it to be something like a massively multiplayer "Dead Island" (albiet at indie graphics quality) and instead what I got was what amounts to a giant deathmatch shooter arena with zombies as an enviromental hazard. No skill selections or anything as the game promised... and really when they asked me to pay microtransaction currency to revive (or wait 4 hours) it was kind of a deal breaker.
I can however see why some fans of dedicated deathmatch arenas might like it though, it's however not the game that was advertised, if I knew what it was going to be like, I never would have puchused it.
That said, I am REALLY happy Valve came through, more so than I expected. To be honest I hope they decide to vet games a lot more before putting them on the service, especially with this "Project Greenlight"... you know, making sure the games are what the developers are claiming they are, have the advertised features, etc...
I think War Z shows the dark side of indie game design to be honest, since from where I'm sitting it seems like a giant cash grab. I never played the Arma 2 mod that inspired it (not being a bit shooter fan) so I can't compare them, but I suppose I can see the issues if the comparisons I'm hearing are true, not to mention understand the motivation for churning out something like this.
I can however see why some fans of dedicated deathmatch arenas might like it though, it's however not the game that was advertised, if I knew what it was going to be like, I never would have puchused it.
That said, I am REALLY happy Valve came through, more so than I expected. To be honest I hope they decide to vet games a lot more before putting them on the service, especially with this "Project Greenlight"... you know, making sure the games are what the developers are claiming they are, have the advertised features, etc...
I think War Z shows the dark side of indie game design to be honest, since from where I'm sitting it seems like a giant cash grab. I never played the Arma 2 mod that inspired it (not being a bit shooter fan) so I can't compare them, but I suppose I can see the issues if the comparisons I'm hearing are true, not to mention understand the motivation for churning out something like this.
Can anyone fill us in on what this is all about please? Not everyone has even heard of War Z before this article.
I'd like to say I just put in my refund request, hopefully it will go through as things were a little differant for me than Mike. For me The War Z *was* listed under products, you need to look at the games starting with "the". Also there was no "products and payments" options so I had to use suggestions as a catch all phrase. Hopefully it gets forwarded to the right place if I did it wrong.
The walkthrough here is good, just mentioning that Valve might have changed some of the actual headings under support recently.
The walkthrough here is good, just mentioning that Valve might have changed some of the actual headings under support recently.
There's no Purchases and Payment option for me, both when I choose product not listed and The War Z. Anyone know why that is?
The game was only release a few days ago on Steam, that's what I meant.Baldr said:
I'm sorry but this game was a cash in, not a game inspired by World War Z. Hell, you can just google the article that Forbes did on this game. It's not that there are "some" artwork similarities with the War Inc. There are screenshots showing the exact same character models, weapon models, and set pieces. It'd be like if Valve just stuck zombies in TF2 and called it Team Fortress Z and charged people for it with none of the features advertised inside the game.
This isn't the executive producer being dumb, this is a borderline scam job. The very fact that their Term of Service is verbatim League of Legends' TOS (right down to mentioning League of Legends repeatedly with no mention of The WarZ at all.)
This game had no business being on Steam at all. I thought Greenlight was being handled poorly, but this was a complete joke for what Valve usually does.
I'll try to fill you in.KingsGambit said:
Hammerpoint made a game called The War Inc. A free-to play FPS. Then the DAYZ mod for ARMA 2 appeared and earned the ARMA developers a boatload of new sales. So much so that Bohemian (the ARMA devs) started patching ARMA 2 specifically for DAYZ. What was really great for DAYZ was that Bohemian is now the developer for the DAYZ standalone title with Dean Hall (the man behind the successful mod) as project leader. That's a huge success.
Hammerpoint started making ads for a game called TheWarZ not too long after DAYZ was featured on every single online outlet. Some outlets outright questioned it for being a scam job right off the bat. Others ignored it. The WarZ is just The War Inc. with zombies, a map that's half the size of DayZ's(was advertised as bigger than DAYZ), half the features of DayZ and about none of the effort to cover up the fact that every character model in the WarZ is exactly the same as it was in the War Inc.
All the while charging people for it in a way that you would see in most Free to play games ON TOP of $15.
So what happens next is this The WarZ game winds up on Steam out of seemingly nowhere. It advertised a bunch a feature that it did not have.
Can be seen here:[link]http://i.imgur.com/j9Q3f.jpg?1[/link]Notice all of the lies.
When confronted with questions about the Steam Store Desctiption the devs denied that the game was in an alpha or beta release. The called the release a "Foundation Release" meaning that any advertised features would be added later at an unspecified date. The amount of rage was large on the Steam forums.
Them 2 things happened. First was, for some reason, the developers had been removing negative comments on the Steam Forum for the game as well as their own forums. Valve said they would investigate into the matter right away.
Then in the same day this article by Forbes goes up:
Link:[link]http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/12/19/allegations-of-false-advertising-hound-the-war-z-release-on-steam/[/link]
Later that day, TheWarZ disappered from Steam with Valve apologizing right away.
Essentially, TheWarZ got caught lying its ass off about everything and now its reputation is ruined.
Well I think it depends how you're seeing it. I mean if you paid to watch a movie in the theater (or rented it) and didn't like it, are you allowed to ask for your money back? I mean you're paying for the experience and you're taking a risk.Aardvaarkman said:
This I agree with though, the game was most definitely falsely advertised.Aardvaarkman said:
They don't deserve praise, but I don't know if they deserve criticism. They have to trust the other parties to some extent, but they definitely need to impose sanction for breaking that trust.Aardvaarkman said:
THank you very much for your post. I'm just, wow. As well as being as shady as it comes, I'm stunned a game could make it onto Steam without some stringent QA first. I love the stories of the little guy getting noticed by his excellent work and landing a job with the big guys, but I find it hard to believe how a company, with a presumably well known product, could get up to such practices and how it could get released and monetised the way it was, all without Valve clocking on.AzrealMaximillion said:
Hadn't heard about this before so a big thanks for the very informative post. This should really have prefaced the original article
It should have. Rock Paper Shotgun and Kotaku had been following the scummyness of this game. The Escapist website isn't the best for keeping an eye on stuff like this. Other websites have gone into what controversies Steam Greenlight went through and are going through currently, the Escapist members are largely unaware of these.KingsGambit said:THank you very much for your post. I'm just, wow. As well as being as shady as it comes, I'm stunned a game could make it onto Steam without some stringent QA first. I love the stories of the little guy getting noticed by his excellent work and landing a job with the big guys, but I find it hard to believe how a company, with a presumably well known product, could get up to such practices and how it could get released and monetised the way it was, all without Valve clocking on.AzrealMaximillion said:
Hadn't heard about this before so a big thanks for the very informative post. This should really have prefaced the original article
Also one of the major reasons why this game was put on Steam so quickly is because they had The War Inc. on Steam before. When a developer puts a game on Steam their other titles are very much more likely to accepted without much review.
Valve isn't my favorite and Steam has pissed me off more than once in the past but at least they're fixing this. A shame it was allowed to happen in the first place but hopefully they'll take this backlash as a reason to get better testers/quality control.
Well this is... interesting. I was actually considering this game but after what happened I think I'm gonna wait for the DayZ standalone version. That's fucking crazy how this Titov guy pretty much lied to us and then blamed us for misreading what was clearly false advertising. I'm surprised he isn't getting his ass sued off for this, and I'm pretty sure his career and reputation are pretty much dead, and if not then I certainly won't be buying any games with his name on it.
As for Valve, while this game should have never even been listed on Steam, they are handling the situation as they should and are taking their share of responsibility for this. I suspect they will be reviewing and revising their game listing policy after this, like maybe adding some more Q&A to the listing process, or requesting an evaluation of the build that will be posted to make sure the developers are indeed including what they say they are including.
I really do think though that the people who are hating on Valve right now are just hating on them to hate on them. Say what you will about them, whether their games suck or Steam sucks, they know how to treat their fan base and clientele. Some people may have had a bad experience with them, but that happens with every company. You can't expect them to have a perfect customer relations department. I'm not a fanboy or anything but I don't think a lot of the hate Valve gets is called for. They generally treat their customers well and listen to their customers too, which can't be said about most other companies.
As for Valve, while this game should have never even been listed on Steam, they are handling the situation as they should and are taking their share of responsibility for this. I suspect they will be reviewing and revising their game listing policy after this, like maybe adding some more Q&A to the listing process, or requesting an evaluation of the build that will be posted to make sure the developers are indeed including what they say they are including.
I really do think though that the people who are hating on Valve right now are just hating on them to hate on them. Say what you will about them, whether their games suck or Steam sucks, they know how to treat their fan base and clientele. Some people may have had a bad experience with them, but that happens with every company. You can't expect them to have a perfect customer relations department. I'm not a fanboy or anything but I don't think a lot of the hate Valve gets is called for. They generally treat their customers well and listen to their customers too, which can't be said about most other companies.
Have there been any other games that were removed for similar reasons? I know Crysis 2 and Dragon Age II were removed, but that was because EA are greedy, anti-competitive bastards.
The only other game I know to be missing is Prey. I was going to buy it for quite cheap in a sale some years ago. I think they ran out of game keys or something. Anyway, it was removed from the store and has never been put back. I don't even want to play it particularly (though I remember enjoying it when I did), I just want to own it because it's the one Steam sale game I missed out on...and I want what I can't have I think I have it on disc somewhere also...but it's not the same :-(
The only other game I know to be missing is Prey. I was going to buy it for quite cheap in a sale some years ago. I think they ran out of game keys or something. Anyway, it was removed from the store and has never been put back. I don't even want to play it particularly (though I remember enjoying it when I did), I just want to own it because it's the one Steam sale game I missed out on...and I want what I can't have
I think I have it on disc somewhere also...but it's not the same :-(