The Pejorative Panda - December Edition

[ThermoNukePanda]

Ladies and Gentlemen, the shitstorm surround the newly released The War Z is brewing, and personally this Panda is more outraged at the retard-monkeys-who-made-the-game (read: "developer") over their most recent comments than I am about the blatant lies posted on Steam for the game description.

But let's start from the beginning shall we?

I've never played Arma, nor it's popular zombie/survival mod DayZ, but I hear it's a "thing" lately. As it is with any popular flava-o-da-month you can bet your sweet little panda ass that there are going to be copycats (look at the literally double digit amounts of indie Minecraft clones on XBox's Marketplace). Enter Hammerpoint Interactive, a shithole of a studio who apparently thinks it is completely acceptable to sell a half-finished shitty product and blame their customers for being morons.

It was bad enough when the game first released on Steam. The description of the game had numerous factual errors listed within its bulletpoints, and the Internet being the Internet raised their collective fists in unison to cry foul on Reddit.

Taking screengrabs from Steam, one user even went to far as to helpfully shed some light on the fallacies.

As you can see, some of that is very damning. Huge persistant world MY ASS! I'd be hella pissed too if there was only ONE map and it wasn't even 75km.

How does something like this happen? How does a game actually get on to Steam's service with such glaring inconsistencies in the game's description?

Sergey Titov, of Hammerpoint Interactive, had an interview with Gamespy to try to clear the air on everything. Are you ready to chow down on a filthy pile of fecal matter?

"I'm sure there'll be people who will look into small details and will say ‘no I was mislead' where in fact they imagined something to themselves without checking details first."

"I think there's a difference between false claims and perception of the text....."

Perception of text? Imagining how AWESOME this game supposedly is, but since you didn't "check details" to find out the game is a piece of shit then the onus is on you? What a pompous douchebag this guy is. Being shown PROOF of Hammerpoint's drivel, not imaginary fantasies dreamed up by neckbeards itching to kill zombies, apparently isn't enough. SirGay Moronitov sticks to his guns and literally blames the consumer.

Eventually Steam was able to update the description of the game, removing some (but not all) of the lies regarding game features. As you can see, they still seem to think the one map is at least 100km in size (proven wrong).

But wait, this seriously gets worse and this is the part that is really chaffing my panda ass. Sit down folks, you're going to want to before you read this next bit.

Sergey goes on to say,

"There's no such thing as 'fully released' for online game. As far as I'm concerned The War Z is in a stage when we're ready to stop calling it Beta. This is a basic version—bones to which we're going to add more and more 'meat'—features and content in the coming months and hopefully years."

I'm floored. I really am. I've long been an angry Panda with the idea that we as consumers are not longer buying full products when it comes to video games. The mentality of "ship it first, fix it later.... maybe" drives me insane. I can't even begin to count the number of games that have fallen into this trip. The one key difference? The admittance by SirShithead that you're not buying a full game and that such a thing doesn't exist.

And calling the game a "basic version"? They're even bandying about the term "Foundation Release" to avoid calling it a Beta!!! Are you fucking kidding me!?!? If I could resurrect Sam Kinison right now to come into this thread to channel the meltdown my brain is experiencing at the moment I would.

And don't even get me started about the new mysterious microtransactions. When your character died previously you used to have a 60 minute respawn timer before you could hop back into the game.

Now? FOUR FUCKING HOURS. Unless of course you click ther shiny button onscreen to bypass the timer and pay real fucking money.

I implore you, don't support games like this. Stand up for yourself, and a little self respect, and don't let companies like this take a steaming dump on consumers as a whole.

This is a trend that needs to stop, and not be accepted. There is no reason this game should be the top game on Steam right now. None at all. The problem is that it is, and when people vote with their wallets (for good or for bad) developers usually take notice. Being on top of Steam sends a message that this sort of business model is "ok". It's not.

So for the love of god please stop throwing money at Hammerpoint Interactive. They don't deserve it and there is absolutely NO REASON they should be the highest game on Steam at the moment.

[PeeKnuckle]

As Steam dealt with fixing the actual details of this game, THQ filed for Bankruptcy.

Sad times.

[Dateranoth]

I don't mind a game that gets help through beta by willing customers but I don't approve at all of pretending to give you a full game when it clearly isn't.

[ThermoNukePanda]

I don't mind a game that gets help through beta by willing customers but I don't approve at all of pretending to give you a full game when it clearly isn't.

I aosbolutely agree with you. I beta test all the time (MW:O, Hawken, Dust 514, etc) and believe in many instances a beta is GREAT for playtesting and bug squashing. What I am not going to stand for is some bullshit developer claiming a game is a "basic edition", or "foundation release", and proceed to advertise their game claiming that it has features it doesn't

[Cpt Underpants]

I completely agree. The simple fact that the game's PR people expect the media to generally accept their explanations without question is further evidence that it should continue to be called gaming "journalism". Once enough people kick up a stink that it will generate more page hits, only then do you end up with coverage.

[Avahra]

WTF?

[ThermoNukePanda]

I know Ava. Totally WTF.

@Cpt: Much agreed. It's only by digging into the problems and making it VERY clear that we won't stand for shit like this that things MIGHT change. Doubtful it will be we can still try.

Well the game has been pulled from Steam. You can no longer purchase it at this time, though people who HAVE bought the game can continue to play. Those who want refunds may contact Steam through support.

Oooo, Apparently Mr. Sergey Titov was also involved a bit with another outstanding game.

Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing. From Wiki:

Although the packaging of Big Rigs states that the main objective of the game is to race their semi-trailer truck (known colloquially as a "Big Rig") to safety in order to deliver illegal cargo being carried by the vessel, while avoiding the local police force, in actuality, there are no police in the game, and no such objectives are presented within the game itself. Much of the game instead centers on the player racing their truck against fellow drivers to the finish line; however, the player's computer-controlled opponent vehicles have no AI and never move from the starting position. In addition, due to a lack of collision detection, there are no obstacles to negotiate within the game, and the laws of physics can be violated frequently.

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing received unanimously negative reviews; much of the criticism for the game was directed at a lack of collision detection, frequent bugs, poor visuals, and severe lack of functionality. As a result, the game is now widely regarded as one of the worst video games of all-time.

Behold.