It's that time of the year again, ladies and gents. The last ditch effort for developers to create some financial drama for the financial dramarama before the end of the year. This year, Hammerpoint Interactive has taken up the mantle and decided to create their own, special kind of drama.
Hammerpoint Interactive are the developers of a game called The War Z, an online server based zombie survival FPS with supposed RPG elements. Already at the announcement of the game, there was controversy. People accused it of feeding off the popularity of the popular ArmA II mod, Day Z. Though the developers distanced themselves from these claims, the controversy didn't stop there. Fast forward to December 17th, 2012.
December 17th
The War Z is released on Steam, with no indication of the games status, as well as a overly kind feature list. People are extremely quick to notice that everything is not as it should be. Whereas the game's store page promises multiple areas ranging from 100 to 400 square kilometres, the game only contains a single map; "Colorado", and it weighs in at just under 75 square kilometres. Additionally, the game advertises space for up to 100 persons per server, but at release, the game supports up to a maximum of 50. The page also lists experience points that can be used to purchase abilities and level up, which is a feature not present in the game.
December 18th
The War Z store page on Steam is altered to reflect a more accurate, albeit still inaccurate, representation of the features present in the game.
On the Steam discussion board for the game, Valve employee Al Farnsworth posts a thread announcing that Valve is investigating allegations of censorship and illegitimate banning of people who criticise the game.
Hammerpoint Interactive's executive producer, Sergey Titov, releases a statement saying that "[...] it was clear that there were a number of customers that felt that information about the game was presented in a way that could have allowed for multiple interpretations."
December 19th
The War Z vanishes from Steam, and an official statement by Valve's marketing director, Doug Lombardi, is released; "We apologize for this and have temporary removed the sale offering of the title until we have time to work with the developer and have confidence in a new build. Those who purchase the game and wish to continue playing it via Steam may do so." Additionally, they offer refunds to anyone who feels deceived.
A Kotaku writer posts an article revealing that the images used in the War Z's promotional as well as ingame artwork were ripped from other media, including the TV series "The Walking Dead".
This is a fairly good demonstration of how not to treat your community. While Hammerpoint Interactive claims the game is in a "Foundation" release state, no indication of that was given on the game's store page whatsoever. Had they actually stated the game was in an unfinished, yet continuously developed, state, all this may have been avoided.
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Last edited by Serio; December 20th, 2012 at 04:37 AM.
I gave up on War Z as soon as it entered "beta" stage. Many popular streamers who were curious and bought into the beta weren't impressed, and requested a refund on the game. They refused, saying there were no refunds. Already a breaking point. Even Steam, who deals in digital keys like War Z, will give refunds.
I don't even know how some of my friends were able to bring themselves to buy it. It doesn't even look satisfying.
They also copy and pasted League of Legends terms and conditions page directly out of their client. Image here.
The War Z is an outright scam. It's an attempt to sell an unfinished product as a finished one, lacking in features. It's like buying a basket of fruit, then returning home only to find that the food is rotten.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mihail
This is nothing compared to APB, they literally scammed people.
The War Z is an outright scam. It's an attempt to sell an unfinished product as a finished one, lacking in features. It's like buying a basket of fruit, then returning home only to find that the food is rotten.
That's not a fair analogy. At least the fruit was ripe at one point. War Z is just an alpha pretending to be a released game.
It appears they have. Hammerpoint Interactive's descend down the Spiral of Eternal Failure continues. The USPTO(United Station Patent & Trademark Office) suspended the War Z's trademark over a month ago, due to similarities with Paramount Pictures' World War Z trademark. Of course, the developer adamantly maintains that the trademark was not suspended, contrary to what the evidence points to.
Lesson learnt: don't buy a game from an unknown developer without reading previews or reviews. A screenshot won't tell if it's a good game. It's not a scam, they're just really bad developers. The most devastating issues seem to be technical and public relations ones.
Perhaps people have had too consistent run with good games to forget there still are extremely bad games.
Valve also declined to release Postal 2 on Steam and postponed Postal 3 because they thought it's too bad.
Last edited by Rikupsoni; December 25th, 2012 at 07:54 AM.
I didn't even hear about The War Z until some places started talking about this out of the blue. I guess I'm not all that big into zombie games in the first place, but I do agree that releasing a game like this unfinished is rather bad. Yeah, we've had seedy developers, but most of the time they released a (mostly) finished product but then stopped supporting it.
Looking at it, I guess another problem was with the server stability and ability to guard against hackers. It seems to have gotten to the point that those who were willing to bother with the game simply couldn't play because the servers devolved into a deathmatch.
I also see the developer released this vague open letter, though he dances around the issues with the game. No mention of the game being taken off the steam service either.
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A Saga of Continuous Failure - The War Z 
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