‘The War Z’ Steam Launch Met With Controversy

The War Z managed to climb atop the Steam sales charts after it was released on the platform yesterday, but it wasn’t before long that developer Hammerpoint Interactive was on the receiving end of accusations of fraud, false advertising, and blatant money-grabbing.

In a post on Reddit, one gamer called Hammerpoint out on the list of features found on the game’s Steam store page, most of which are not actually in the game. For instance, the original features list claims that there are “multiple” locales that are between 100 to 400 square km. In actuality, the game only has one map — and it’s 72 square km.

The list also claims that The War Z both supports public and private servers, but private servers are still not up yet. Another bullet point says that The War Z allows for “up to” 100 players on the same server, but no server currently goes higher than 50.

In a statement to Kotaku, general manager Sergey Titov said that the complaints being lobbed at The War Z are a minority.

“We’re constantly running surveys to ask our players what they think – how we’re doing. 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,” Titov said.

In response to the growing backlash, Titov posted on the game’s forums, apologizing for, as he puts it, people “who misread information about game features.”

“We’ve taken steps to correct this and format information presented on our Steam Store page in a way so it provides more clear information about game features that are present in the Foundation Release and what to expect in the coming weeks.”

Hammerpoint has since revised its features list on The War Z‘s Steam store page, but the game’s max players is still said to be “up to 100.” As of writing, this is not the case.

The following quote from Titov, speaking to GameSpy, might explain why that is. When the issue of max players was brought up, the developer had this to say:

“Max players — I’m not sure why this is even an issue. [The] text clearly stated ‘up to 100 players.’ And 50 players [which] we have right now — is what our players — our community feels is comfortable level for them to play.”

Titov goes on to say that private servers do allow for up to 100 players, but private servers are not currently active.

As rough as the situation already is, it’s not likely to go away any time soon. Valve’s Al Farnsworth posted on the game’s Steam forums, saying that Valve is investigating the issue.

What are your thoughts on the matter?