War Z players accuse developers of misleading them

By: Jason McCarthy

  |   December 21st, 2012   |  

PC News

Players accuse War Z developers of misleading them through false information; new patch forcing them to sign terms of service that disallows funds.

Fans of Hammerpoint Interactive’s open world zombie survival horror video game War Z are furious and that too for a very good reason.

According to the Reddit users, the features that the developers were advertising were nowhere to be found in the game upon its full release on Valve’s digital distribution platform Steam.

These features included multiple large game worlds of various sizes, levelling system based on skill point, player versus environment combat, servers supporting hundred of players as well as private servers.

Even though the game’s Steam page was updated within 24 hours of the game’s release, the information about the game remained unchanged and still listed features that were not yet part of the game.

The Reddit users further went on to reveal that Hammerpoint Interactive released a new update for War Z, which made significant alterations to the game.

Originally, a player could respawn one hour after dying. However, the patch that released on the very next day of the game’s release, the respawn time got increased from one hour to four hours. The developer also added a new ability to allow players to instantly respawn their character by using the in-game currency, which could be purchased using real-world money.

This, in effect, brought the game closer to the free-to-play and thus micro-transaction model, a transition that the users had not been informed about at the time of the game’s launch on Steam.

War Z players received another shock as the day 2 patch released by Hammerpoint Interactive started forcing fans of the game to sign a terms of service, which reportedly ‘disallowed refunds.’

One particular Reddit user, IAmFluffey, claimed that the version of War Z launched on Steam on December 17 was incomplete and simply went to make the greed of its developers.

The latest multiplayer game by Hammerpoint Interactive had gotten positive reviews during its alpha release, even though there were some typical alpha bugs present in it. The gameplay also attracted positive reviews.

Even though the game was expected to make a solid impact upon its launch, the game got caught up in controversy.

The whole controversy surrounding the full release of War Z on Steam is bound to hurt the reputation of the game and its developers.

The executive producer of the game Sergey Titov, however, claimed that the complaints are being blown out of proportion and that only a small number of customers are not happy with the purchase.

“As of right now over 93% of our customers like the game, with over 40% saying it’s perfect and around 50% saying it’s good, but they’d like to see more polishing and features.”

Have you tried out War Z yet? Did you come across the issues mentioned by Reddit users? Share your valuable opinion using the comments section below.