f13.net forums - The War Z

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July 07, 2025, 12:45:57 PM

we're back, baby

What an impressively cavalier disregard for ethics or honesty, and the forum seems to be suggesting there's lots more if you dig. So guessing it really is the obvious and half-baked cash grab we expected.

Still, the top selling game on steam, people desperately want their zombies.

I am really annoyed at Steam. For some reason I assumed for a long time that they had someone in charge of checking the products they were selling to be somewhat solid, or at least not total frauds. My issues here are not even with the War Z game per se, it's playable and enjoyable albeit buggy and vastly incomplete, and what they offer is par for the course of all these new crowdfunded, pay-in-advance, kickstarter-ish titles, where you definitely and literally pay to get into a beta. But Steam? Not only they should know and act better, but the moment the blatantly fake feature list isn't just on the official WarZ page but it makes it into the Steam client, they take responsibility for the lies. And as a result, as a customer I am gonna take future Steam mysterious presentations with much more caution.

I think the picture Gets posted in the previous page hurts Steam's reputation more than War Z/Hammerpoint's (which was nil to begin with).

EDIT to add: War Z will have all the things in that feature list. It could take months, but they will. Couldn't they just fucking say so? No, fucking greedy assholes cannot risk not making the game (and their profit) due to honesty, right? Bleargh.

Some explaining from Titov. Doesn't fix the Steam fiasco one bit.

Quote

Hey everyone !

I'd like to address some of the community questions and concerns raised over last week.

1) What does "Foundation Release" means? Where all those features you promised ?

I really hoped that we've been communicating to community our development plans really well, but apparently some people are still have questions. First of all - "Foundation Release' means that we feel that game reached state when we can drop "Beta version" designation. It means that our system are mature enough to represent BASE for future feature development and expansion.

As we've noted several times in a past - online games in general, and The War Z in particular - are not boxed products - it's a game service to our users. We start with a basic set of features and we keep adding more content and features working together with community to make sure that game is going into direction our PAYING customers want. Ie - if you have bought the game, and keep playing game - your voice will count.

In next 1-4 weeks we plan to add more features to our initial Release :

- Leaderboards
- Rental for Gameworld and Stronghold servers
- Locker items so you'll be able to store your loot in a game world, as well as way to facilitate items dealing between players.
- New "building blocks" - items that will allow you to customize your Stronghold meta game experience

This should cover all base features that we've promised game will have at release when we've announced it back in July 2012.

2) What happened to Skills ?

We've launched our Skills test for a small group of players 1.5 weeks ago. We've hoped that we'll be able to make skills available to all players this year, but I can tell you that it's not going to happen. Our initial tests showed that we still have work to do, and we're working with active War z players to make sure that skill trees alone will be huge part of the gameplay and character development and will create value for your characters.

Bottom line - we're moving full steam ahead, but at the same time we know that now we CAN'T afford to rush half baked feature that as important as Skill Trees.

3) What's with hackers - how many of them you've banned ? Also - did you really banned innocent players ?

Let me just say this again - we have ZERO tolerance toward hackers and cheaters. And we'll fight them as hard as we can. Over last week we've banned over 3,000 players. Just to give you idea - this is less than 1% of our active players. As we've learned later - few hundred of those who been banned was using game exploits that are not considered by us being hacks, but still - we don't appreciate people trying to break game and not reporting it.

Anyway - we've adjusted our system, and we've unbanned all those "innocent" players and gave them 700GC to compensate for 2-3 days they were unable to play.

Now - some people said that we do not have anti cheat engine or anything and we've caught those guys by placing objects in a world that can't be accessed other than by using hacks. First of all - yes we did that. Second - it was up to system ( yes we have one developed by special anticheat engine team ) to catch those guys and report them to operators. Yet - this "one time" trick only helped us to catch around 1000 potential cheaters. Rest was up to our automated wallhack/ESP/noclip detection engine and our behavioral analytic software.

What will happens next ? We'll be actively fighting hackers. Hopefully we'll get it to the point when risk of being banned will be much greater than any benefits than they potentially get from using hacks.

4) What's about all that hate toward The War Z ?

Okay I can say "I don't know' and I'll be right - I don't know for sure, but at same time I have some ideas. As far as you know we're doing surveys asking our players what they like and what they don't like about our game and service. We're doing it once a month.

We've did our last survey yesterday. It got us over 100,000 replies - so we can safely say statistically it represent what our players think. We've got an overall approval of 93% !!! That's INSANE number. 40% just like game as is, 50% like game, but feel it needs more polishing and adding some new features ( yes - server rentals ). 5.5% played game, didn't like it and only 1.5% of respondents - some of the are guys who been recently banned - said they hate game.

Statistically speaking we can just say "okay, who cares about that 1.5%", but we really like to know what those guys are thinking. Because there's another set of numbers :

- 30% of our players played DayZ
- 70% of our players never played Dayz
- 5% of our players never heard about DayZ before they started looking into The War Z

This means that most of our players are new to the "genre" of zombie survival game. They either like zombie games, or they like MMO's or they like survival games. They do not play The War Z because they've been fans of Dayz or even played it.

I think there are a few groups of players who don't like us for what we're doing :

1) Extreme DayZ fanboys. I really envy to Dayz creators for having such loyal players, yet I don't think we can do anything - yes we've announced game right before DayZ mod reached it's prime and it started losing popularity after that. And yes - The War Z and DayZ themes are similar. Heck - both projects are using same reference to other products in their titles )). So - if I'll be a Dayz fanboy - I'll be royally pissed off at The War Z. Especially since they won't be able to do anything about it, all they can do is to spread lies and false information about game. They just love to omit obvious facts and bend words.

2) Players that got a different game from what they expected. One example of this - is whole PVE vs PVP discussion. When we asked our players - we've got very interesting results - half of players want unrestricted PVP, half want to eliminate PVP aspect of the game and keep game strictly PVE. Problem that can't be solved by us.

And it doesn't help obviously that The War Z got super popular despite any negativity that those people try to spread. I mean - game IS a big success for a small indie, self funded development team. It's nowhere near success stories like Minecraft, but at same time we're just two months old - we've launched first public alpha of the game on October 15th.

5) What's next for The War Z ?
Is to have nice holidays time off, with only operations team working 24/7. And after that get back to release more content, new features and listen to what our players will want game to be.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone !
Sergey Titov
Executive Producer
The War Z

Worth a watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtKAm3nzg6I

It's great hearing him get more and more frustrated as the video goes on.

Quote from: Falconeer on December 18, 2012, 09:05:30 AM

I am really annoyed at Steam. For some reason I assumed for a long time that they had someone in charge of checking the products they were selling to be somewhat solid, or at least not total frauds.

Why would you assume that for a second? They do the same amount of checking a retail outlet does. "Is there something that looks like a game in the box?".

That looks utterly horrid.

Quote from: Kageru on December 18, 2012, 03:15:59 PM

Quote from: Falconeer on December 18, 2012, 09:05:30 AM

I am really annoyed at Steam. For some reason I assumed for a long time that they had someone in charge of checking the products they were selling to be somewhat solid, or at least not total frauds.

Why would you assume that for a second? They do the same amount of checking a retail outlet does. "Is there something that looks like a game in the box?".

I higly dislike TotalBiscuit, and still we agree on this aspect. He uses my same identical words when he says that Valve should take more responsibility for the stuff they put up. Which does not make us right, it means more people "felt" that so far Steam had higher standards for the minimum level of completion of the stuff they sold.

I can't stand his whine about "you should never be able to lose items you paid forr!". Leave hardcore PvP alone.
I also think he definitely has an excessively negative attitude from the get go. The frame of reference here is Day Z, which is in a similar state, but as pointed out multiple times at least that one is free. So well, as long as the rage is mostly coming from the Steam situation, I understand it.

When you can be killed as you spawn in, losing items you paid for does seem pretty shit. There's hardcore PvP, and then there's clownshoes.

Look, if you are buying items in a game where you lose them when you die, YOU are clownshoes.

That said, those paid items are for the private servers, their password protected Trammels, where people will have their own private parties and will smash NPC zombies while wearing paid designer shirts and teddybear backpacks all day long.

Heh.

He said trammel.

Heh heh.

Quote from: Falconeer on December 18, 2012, 04:06:14 PM

Then they have odd double standards. I don't expect EBgames to fund someone to play through and verify the quality of every title they stock, I don't expect Steam to do so either.

The console games might do this, in light of the limitations they place on patching and having lots of users not connected to the net, but they also charge the producer "tens of thousands" of dollars for that service that steam to the best of my knowledge does not.

That said, it will be interesting if Steam pulls the game. Not sure if they've done that before. And these guys are pretty blatant.

I think the difference is that Steam can edit that features page, whereas a store isn't as responsible for what's on the box art.

I would expect most game producers selling on steam don't want Valve doing that.

Though I would say if the game producers can ban and mute discussion on the steam forums relating to their game that's an issue. Moderation should be by steam's code of conduct, not the producers, if it's going to be a resource of benefit to players.

The developer apparently asked people to rate them on metacritic... possibly not a great idea.

Is this the first such high profile scam attempt on Steam? I'd like to think that Valve will intervene because they don't want to lose their credibility for the benefit of some asshole games developer.

The review of the producers previous title is excellent comedy, Big Rigs: Over the road racing.

I suspect valve considers that the community will police it. The gaming community, forums and metacritic score providing enough warning alarm bells. Though they really could gain from having some sort of "alpha" or "beta" label on games, now that paid beta is becoming so common. But I expect they'll take their time to think about the best response.

Looks like the real moderators are moving in here.

Big Rigs is considered one of the most obvious scams in the history of videogaming , and yes Sergei Titov was the mastermind behind that one too.

I'll say it again though: to me War Z was not a scam until it landed on Steam. The game itself, as a beta-ish work-in-progress product where you pay once but you are gonna get constant updates and improvements is not scandalous. What makes it scandalous is blatant false advertising.

For pretty small values of scandalous. If you un-critically accept the box blurb, which is written by the developer, you deserve what you get. And at least in the modern age it doesn't take long for the whiff of deception to be revealed.

Isn't uncritically buying random games on steam like half their revenue or something? Otherwise known as "buying shit while drunk?" Steam should totally shut this down. A scam on your service is bad news for everyone, valve and other game manufacturers alike. I don't think it's high profile yet, but it could get there left unchecked.

Not really sure what steam will do, but they are slowly responding to the problems (for reference, Legends of Pegasus was a mess and took months to get removed from the store) and are appearing on the steam forums asking what the hell is going on in there.

The reason Steam didn't vet this game is because they have a policy that allows publishers who already have games on Steam to skip the review process. The guys that made the War Z also made War Inc., which I believe is a f2p shooter available on Steam. This may force Steam to review or change that policy. Some more good info in the links.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/12/19/allegations-of-false-advertising-hound-the-war-z-release-on-steam/
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/the-war-z/1226980p1.html

That's an interesting reason that some really odd shit gets up on steam with seemingly no review process.

Minor update in case anyone actually bought this:

It's been pulled from Steam, and Steam is offering refunds for anyone who purchased it. You must submit a support ticket to get one.

This allows me to keep thinking that Steam has some standards and their reputation is somewhat safe to me.

I think this handled pretty appropriately, given that the publisher is providing what is essentially a game and gets to do so under a clause that skips some or all of the vetting process re: steam's previous policy. In this case they probably subjected it to some quick review, and decided given the state of the game that you could label as a finding of fact that the game's advertising on steam was outright lies and that the appropriate course of action was to offer refunds to anyone who wants it, no questions, so that nobody ends up feeling stuck with a shit lie of a product on valve's behalf.

The down side is I don't know what to grief-gift people with now this Christmas.

Quote from: Falconeer on December 18, 2012, 04:06:14 PM

I can't stand his whine about "you should never be able to lose items you paid forr!". Leave hardcore PvP alone.

If he hadn't lost the bat within literally 20 seconds of logging in to the server because he spawned right next to a rucksack, I would agree with you. There's 75 square kilometres to choose a spawnpoint from, the least they could've done is either make a fucktonne of spawnpoints or just randomize where you spawn.

I would've agreed with you if he'd been running around for hours and then gotten killed, but not when it happens within 20 seconds of spawning.

Yep, limited or known spawn points in a PK game is terrible.

That said he didn't lose the bat at that point. He lost the bat when he tried to use it on 4 zombies and failed to drop any of them.

Does anyone now how the game actually works for someone who knows the trick? There seemed to be a lot of zombies and beating them off with a torch not too practical. Can you make the stealth work well enough or is there some way to lose them?

Quote from: Ginaz on December 19, 2012, 08:53:29 AM

I don't think this it's this simple. There are a couple of small publishers with titles already on Steam which are languishing on Greenlight waiting for approval. Rockin' Android, for example.

So apparently it turns out the WarZ guys ripped off a few images from the walking dead (how people find out about these things, I'll never know):

Source: http://kotaku.com/5969927/some-war-z-images-were-ripped-from-the-walking-dead?tag=The-War-Z

He sounds slightly miffed. why so serious?

Some interesting bit of information from an ex-WarZ forum mod. If true, and judging from recent events it probably is, just confirms what a bunch of douches the devs are.

"
EX-Forum Mod Devin here. Let me tell ya some stuff you can spout on for a new youtube video :)

My forum account was hacked, my fault, they deleted a lot of posts. I was de-modded and banned, got my computer secure, re-modded and unbanned and took care of business as usual. Except their company is full of dumb fucks and didn't backup the forums at all. No backups whatsoever.

Sergay then took it upon himself to tell Kewk to demote me for my fuckup that could have been reversed if they were not so fucking stupid.

I then made a post on the forums about how I knew this was coming; and I was sorry and would not long be supporting a company that did not support their unpaid volunteer Moderators that spent over 100+ hours answering THEIR CUSTOMERS questions and concerns as well as relaying them the ideas the community had for their bullshit game.

I was then banned for making a "Rage quit" thread permanent and here is the even funnier part my in-game account banned under the excuse I requested a refund

So, since I didn't sign any sort of NDA for those fuckfaces here are some interesting facts.

WarZ is a direct port over from War Inc. They literally took the game and added NPCs, made a large map, and changed around camera angles and gun settings while adding more functionality and switching over some things. ALL ART however was actually done in-house by their amazing ART team. (Those were the best guys to know, they were in touch more with the community than Kewk)

They randomly ban accounts that have a certain amount of time spent playing in-game, knowing they are hooked on the game so they re-buy the game.

Their anti-hack is actually functional but here's the kicker..wanna know WHY their bans are TEMPORARY the first time around? 0.8% hacking? Try an EXTREMELY LARGE PORTION of the player base is hacking. If they banned everyone they'd have a mass refund issue on their hands, and no one to play their piss poor of an excuse game.

they plan to HALT DEVELOPMENT AND ABANDON THE GAME in SIX months if revenue is not enough for them (I.E. People are not buying GC and spending the fuck out of it) -- take note, if they do not get ENOUGH revenue. They will have enough revenue to pay for the game development for over a year at this point in time already, but if they don't get enough to give themselves regular raises they will stop making the game and shut down the servers and website."

http://www.rhinocrunch.com/forum/general-discussion-of-things-and-such/82-hey-rhino-you-were-right-about-warz

Quote from: Kageru on December 19, 2012, 06:42:06 PM

Does anyone now how the game actually works for someone who knows the trick? There seemed to be a lot of zombies and beating them off with a torch not too practical. Can you make the stealth work well enough or is there some way to lose them?

Zombies are killed by beating them on the head. Even with the torchlight or the spiked bat, you have to aim at the top of their head, or they simply won't die no matter how many times you hit them. He didn't know this becuse there's no freaking tutorial, but even because he didn't care to think about it even though it's in pretty much every zombie movies since forever.

To lose them, you just have to run in a straight line for about three quarters of your sprint allowance, which means you do not sprint ever unless you are being chased. If you are out of sprint bar when zombies start chasing you, you are screwed. He didn't know this because there's no freaking tutorial but even because he didn't care to think about this. It took me one death by zombies to realize that I wanted to save my sprinting bar for running.

Stealth is entirely possible and absolutely necessary (as seen in The Walking Dead especially because you do not want to be noticed by other players ever) but as far as I know the noise & visibility system is not fully implemented yet, so those bars in the upper right corner are not really working much at the moment.