"The War Z" release fiasco on Steam

I don't think we have a thread for this (the Search doesn't let me look for those terms), and this 'game' recently launched on Steam to howls of of frustration, accusations of fraud and deceit, and demands for refunds.

"The War Z" is a new 'zombie survival MMO' by Hammerpoint which looks similar to the Day Z mod for ARMA II; some players allege that this game was rushed out and given a similar title to deceive people into assuming it was the standalone version of Day Z that is currently in development. All subjective, of course, but Hammerpoint is doing plenty of other sketchy things that aren't exactly encouraging.

Some other interesting bits:

- The developers originally promised lots of features that are currently nowhere to be found, including in-game friends lists (none), level-able character skills (none), several large maps included at launch (only one small map included), and up to 100 players per server (actually 50). The War Z's lead, Sergey Titov (of Big Rigs fame?) dismissed these claims as "misinterpretations" by players, but the game's Steam page has since changed to remove the most egregious false claims. (A screencap of the original store page text is included in that article.)

- Hammerpoint copy-pasted League of Legends' TOS and released it with their own product. The TOS still included a link to the LoL website when it was released with War Z

- The TOS has since been changed several times, and now includes a clause that forces players to waive their right to a refund before playing the game. Fraud much?

- Players who did request refunds prior to the TOS change are being vaguely threatened with "the global blacklist for non-trusted users," implying that some online services may refuse service in the future if the player goes ahead with the refund request.

- The latest patch implemented a new four-hour respawn delay after dying in the game. Players can circumvent that four-hour cooldown by purchasing tokens from Hammerpoint for real-world cash. Apparently F2P-style microtransactions were never in the original description of the game, leading some players to allege a bait-and-switch. (It's worth noting that the game has an initial $15 purchase price.)

- Hammerpoint's own community mod that runs the Steam Community forum for The War Z has aggressively banned players who criticize the game and deleted threads containing unflattering information. Valve staff have since stepped in to assess the situation.

Yet despite these issues, the game is currently the number one Top Seller on Steam. Go figure.

Yeah, I've been keeping up on this. This is a clear case where a game should be yanked off of Steam. It's pretty much the definition of a scam. I read somewhere that the development time for this was a whopping SIX MONTHS. Oy vey.

It's so bad that Eurogamer yanked the War Z advertisements from their page. Yet another reason to like Eurogamer.

And here's a good bit about it (recap of SuperJay's stuff) on Rock Paper Shotgun: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/12/19/the-war-z-apologises-after-misleading-steam-customers/

Yeah, Titov sounds anything but apologetic in his 'apology' to "players who misread information about game features." What a slimeball.

Here's some gameplay video and TotalBiscuit commentary:

Its pretty crazy to see really. At this point we pretty much can guarantee steam has zero quality control in place.

Yeah, if Steam allows people to buy and sell warez, it's pretty telling.

That's what surprises me here. While I'm sure Valve doesn't have the resources to monitor each and every game on Steam, I'm guessing that this game gets yanked soon, before it can damage consumer perceptions of Steam's reliability (and Valve's reputation) more than it already has. If Valve leaves this game up indefinitely with all the shady BS that Hammerpoint is trying to get away with, it could seriously damage the trust that their audience has in their store and their brand.

Steam takes ages to respond to this stuff. It's not the first half built/buggy cash grab that's been up on steam, and it usually takes them about a month to get the idea that the devs aren't just fixing bugs but just flat out scamming or failing.

This game may take the cake for being just absolutely terrible even if it was done and correctly advertised.

More fun with attempted refunds. "We have no idea what company we used to process your payment, and we are sort of a little sorry for you using the wrong company and making us unable to issue your refund. Good luck!"

Holy crap.

Oh man I'm getting popcorn!

Also, the game has a user score of 1.5 out of 10 on Metacritic, based on 600+ reviews: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-war-z

Dammit I thought we were posting about this in the WarZ game thread. Need a merge!

Oh, there is one? My bad, I couldn't search on the title (probably b/c of the single letter) and I went through the last month or two of threads and didn't see anything about this.

EDIT: I suppose it would help if I actually looked in the MMO forum, huh?

Wait, they closed the ticket suggesting that you dispute a charge with your bank? That's like, the worst possible solution for them since the banks do NOT LIKE companies who do shit like this.

Also, if that's your personal ticket: do NOT do that if you purchased via Steam. Never do chargebacks with your Steam purchases.

But seriously. "Sorry, we don't know how you bought this game. Fuck, we don't even know who pays us or what the hell we're doing as a company!"

Oh, apparently the other WarZ thread is actually in the MMO subforum, since it was promised to be an MMO and... that's no longer what it is, so this thread is more appropriately placed.

I wonder, does Valve's famous no-hierarchy, do-what-you're-best-at company structure also apply to customer service? Is this situation just waiting for a Valve employee to feel like addressing it?

Yeah, 50 players per server /= an MMO.

It's Outpost: the MMO! PC Gamer should definitely give it a 99% Editor's Choice! award by way of reviewing some version that exists only in their heads. (I'm old.)

I really love the refund advice to contact one's bank. That's amazing. Usually companies that insist they can't do refunds will suddenly discover all sorts of flexibility if you escalate to the point of telling them you're willing to initiate chargebacks.

Just to be clear, this isn't my ticket, I haven't purchased this game (thank god) and up until this week I hadn't even heard of it.

That's a good question. Seems like a great formula for development but a terrible one for customer service. It's crazy that by and large we seem to have adopted a "the mechanisms in place just work or else it's a black box with no customer support" approach to Steam in return for its convenience. Either way, I don't think they have the same level of plausible caveat emptor shield that something like Kickstarter has, rightly or wrongly in either case, and they really need to roll out service or borrow Amazon's or something if they really want to be a dominant platform. As it stands, Microsoft and everyone else in the business is incredibly vulnerable on this front.

If I understand correctly, there are people who bought the game from the developer directly as a pre-order who were given a Steam key to unlock/download the game on release. If true, Steam didn't process the sale and cannot process a refund. The person in that case would need to contact the developer about getting a refund.

Valve's response may be 100% in the right.

I haven't read anything about Valve itself issuing refunds through Steam. The images I posted above are of players attempting to get a refund from Xsolla, Inc - the Russian company that apparently processed the pre-order purchases and that handles the microtransaction payments.

TOO MANY FORUMS!

First letter of each line.

This is amusing:

http://www.pcgamesn.com/article/how-big-war-zs-map

Then the opposite. If someone bought it through Steam, then Xsolla has no reason to offer a refund. I guess what I'm saying is, "Nice picture. What's the context?" I mean, I can call up AT&T and demand a refund for my Comcast service, but I'm not likely to get anywhere.

From that email, it seems they're saying it's possibly an older (pre-october) purchase and they can't track purchases before then. Which would mean not via steam, somehow via the company's purchasing processors.

Given the statement either it's a scam (trying to send the customer on a runaround in hopes he gives up) or they lost a fuckload of data at some point. The company appears to be enough of a clusterfuck that I'm willing to entertain that both are true.

Sounds like a game that's ripe for hacking, too. I mean, with so little effort put into it in general, security probably isn't great either. Have invincible, superfast griefers shown up yet?

Watch TB's video. Who needs to hack when it takes about a minute after spawning for player and monster models to load. (around 9-10 minutes in he's killed by a floating backpack because his client hasn't bothered loading the other player yet)

Valve just pulled it off of Steam.

You can search for it, but you can't buy it. http://store.steampowered.com/app/226700/

*cheers for Valve*

And Steam has removed it. Bravo, Valve.

Good first step - will they give refunds to those who bought it?

I'm sure they will. Supposedly if you bought it directly from the makers and ask for a refund they'll ban your account and then tell you they don't have to refund your money because you were banned for hacking. I haven't seen a screenshot to that regard, but there were stories about it in some of the Steam threads.

Story on Kotaku:

http://kotaku.com/5969836/the-war-z-removed-from-steam

Yeah, looks like steam is offering blanket refunds on it.

Valve's statement:

Hopefully this is one that will stay off Steam, instead of resurfacing after some additional "development."

I'm shocked and appalled. This is not the level of craftsmanship and quality service I had come to expect from the creator of Big Rigs.

Considering there were at some point over 5,000 people playing it online, the sales may have hit 10,000, which is about $100,000 that Valve might be refunding. Hopefully they didn't pay the developer yet.

I don't know about that, although apparently there are some stolen assets used in screenshots for some other game (War Inc I guess?). Whether or not those assets are in-game I'm not sure. It could be a solid title, lord knows people are itching for an official DayZ type of game, and the proposed feature list is intriguing. If they worked on content, got rid of microtransactions, and made it more solid than DayZ it might be worth a buy in the future. I can't see that happening anytime within a year, though.

Steam says they're willing to wait for the dev to make a functional final build, but you can also take that to mean "haha this is us being snarky as shit because you idiots will never get it together"