The War Z dev responds to misleading Steam release complaints
The War Z released on Steam yesterday to vocal critique from consumers claiming many advertised features are missing or incomplete.
Disappointed players have been quick to share their unhappiness over the release, especially on Reddit, but in communications with Kotaku, Hammperoint Interactive general manager Sergey Titov said the complaints are a vocal 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," he said.
"Yet, 4% don't like the game and decided not to play it, and 3% hate the game. My point is that absolute majority of our players are supporting us, yet, yes, players who don't like the game will be very vocal about it."
Reddit users took issue with the game's Steam release, saying it fails to advertise that the game is still in testing, but Titov maintained the Foundation release is not a beta. As for complaints that the Hardcore mode is missing, Titov said it's available when the game is launched and players are overlooking it.
As for other missing features - private servers and skills - Titov said the Steam page will be updated to indicate that these features are upcoming rather than currently available.
Other claims are less easy to verify. Users said that the game's map is considerably smaller than advertised, and Totov said is not, and had a vague answer for an issue regarding server limits.
"I don't see 'LIE' in saying 'up to 100 players per sever' and having the current limit at 50 players," he said.
"We've just lowered the number of players per map down from 70 based on requests and votes from our players. Ie - we've had 70 players per server - which was what we felt was the 'comfort level' for this map, but when we asked our players about it, the majority voted for 50 slots per server. So we did exactly what our community and our players asked us for."
An correction to the Steam page should put Hammerpoint in the clear, although it's unlikely to satisfy those who feel they were lied to when they first purchased the game.