8. The War Z
Staying on the Steam-related topic, I have decided (rather easily) to include this post-apocalyptic nightmare of a game. The War Z game was a rip-off from Hammerpoint Studios of a mod made for the Arma series, and also was incredibly similar to the book and now movie franchise starring Brad Pitt. However, within a week of the game going live on Steam, it was met with a barrage of complaints of false advertising and defrauding customers. Usually, this means a few gamers misreading a game's intentions, but in this game it was a near-open revolt. It transpired that many of the promised features of the game (at launch) were not in the game at all, and instead they are features planned to be added at "some point" in the future. Valve resorted to offering full refunds to customers who bought the game, as it became clear it wasn't what it made itself out to be, and was eventually withdrawn entirely. The game's developers, when confronted with the allegations, had the audacity to blame the gamers who bought their product, stating it was they who misread the game's advertisements, and it was not the developers' jobs to hand-feed customers every step of the way. Two features that Sergey Titov (esteemed developer) defended were the game's playing area and the amount of gamers supported in said zone, apparently stating that "up to 100 players" can range from 0 to 100, meaning that if the game only supported 40 gamers, then the developers had kept their promise. In a similar vein, the game's only starting area was just over 100 square kms, which just barely falls into the 100-400 square kms bracket. That's some inventive interpretation if you ask me. For someone who loves the zombie genre, be it in films, literature or gaming, it's a shame that people try to take advantage of trends and release unfinished and broken products. The War Z epitomises everything wrong with some new releases. It was unfinished, didn't entertain many of the gamers who ended up taking a chance on it, and the overall quality of the textures and in-game material is poor. The latest news on this game is that the developers have changed the name of it to Infestation: Survivor Stories, without changing much else in-game. Hopefully the bad press the original game received will steer people clear of this particular booby-trap.