The War Z, as you can see from my previous article on the subject, has made a big splash very quickly. Even ignoring the controversy about it being started announced so shortly after the success of Day Z and being a very clear attempt to cash in on the ARMA 2 mod’s success, the actual release has hardly been smooth.
Gamespy, however, managed to nab an interview with Hammerpoint Interactive’s Executive Producer, Sergey Titov. The full text of it is in their article, but a brief summary is simple enough.
False Claims?
Sergey, at no point in the entire interview, admits that any of the claims made in their advertising or listed features on the Steam page (which have been amended since the game’s release this morning and are still listing features as being available that are not) were in any way false or even misleading. He spends most of the interview arguing semantics and word definition, all simply word play to avoid saying that they made claims that were not true, aka, lied.
Vocal Minority
He also makes it clear that according to their internal bug reports and complaint lines, the number of people actually complaining about the game is supposedly very small. If that is honestly the case, then those people are extremely loud and have a lot of evidence that other people apparently don’t mind.
Online Release
The final point I’ll make before letting the interview speak for itself is one of the last points he makes, in addressing concerns that The War Z was not released as an actual finished product (which is hardly even a point that can be argued against if one watches or plays the game). His attempted point, as clumsily-worded as it was, seems to be that a constantly-developing and improving online game cannot be said to have an actual release.
The problem with that point is that it is provably false. Online games have a release, they just don’t have a point at which they are finished and done, a distinction that Hammerpoint seems determined not to understand.
Hopefully Valve will address the level of dissatisfaction this game is creating before it destroys the credibility of Steam.
