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The War Z dev: 'We were arrogantly deaf to problems'
They may not be slavering corpses, but the developers of The War Z share one thing in common with the undead denizens of their game: Persistence. Despite seemingly endless controversy, the open-world zombie survival game has reportedly passed 2.8 million sales. From the beginning, players accused The War Z (aka Infestation: Survivor Stories) of liberally borrowing ideas from Bohemia Interactive's cult-hit DayZ, including its setting and basic "survive against endless hordes of corpses" gameplay. Then The War Z reached Steam and was immediately hit by allegations that the developers knowingly listed features on the digital storefront that had not yet been added to the game. Valve eventually stepped in and pulled The War Z from Steam.
Infestation producer: The War Z was a 'terrible choice of a name'
Infestation Survivor Stories (previously known as The War Z) Executive Producer Sergey Titov has penned a post-mortem on Gamasutra about the game's launch in 2012, noting how inviting the comparison to DayZ worked against the project. "That said, The War Z was a terrible choice of name, as it naturally invited comparisons between our game and DayZ," Titov admitted. "We made a big mistake in not listening to the vocal minority of our community who thought the name was terrible [...] Beyond not listening to the community, we were also very arrogant in our public communications. We should have taken more care to communicate how and why this was not a DayZ clone, citing specific differences in both design and conception. Instead of saying to ourselves 'Oh well, haters gonna hate!' we should have tried to understand where the hate was coming from and address it." Another key mistake that Titov and his team made was engaging in an "arms race" to get The War Z to Steam before DayZ, which resulted in its being yanked from that platform due to misrepresentation of the existing game features. Even with these missteps, Titov said that Infestation sold 2.8 million copies, and of those, over half logged at least 50 hours of playing time apiece. You can read Massively's hands-on impressions of this title from 2013.
Infestation: Survivor Stories claims 2.5 million players to date
A new state of the game post is up today for Infestation: Survivor Stories (formerly The War Z), and the team claims that the title has seen 2.5 million players pass through its doors, with "over 100,000 people" playing the game daily. The team apologized for not getting its promised updates out on time and said that it's made "sweeping changes" to improve communications and be more accurate with releases. Part of these efforts included hiring CMs and pledging to an internal model of "complete transparency whenever possible." The state of the game post went on to list some of the game's recent additions, including vehicles, Super Zombies, balance tweaks, and an overhaul of the Colorado map. The team also said that it has committed itself to work on Infestation without external funding.
Free for All: Two weeks on a private Infestation server
I remember when I first laid eyes on Infestation: Survivor Stories. It was GDC Online in 2012, and I did an interview with Alex Josef, Hammperpoint's PR consultant We made a quick trip to the press room, where he popped out a large gaming laptop to show me the game. I was really impressed with how simple its premise was: You're dropped in the middle of the wilderness, there are zombies all around, and you can starve to death. It felt great, as well, sporting realistic lighting effects and systems to simulate hunger, thirst, and sound. So much has happened since that first meeting. I am very, very aware of all of the drama concerning the developers -- the name changes, the patches, the community issues, and so on. I am not writing this to discuss that part of the story. My specific goal over the last couple of weeks was to see whether playing on a private, paid-for server would give me a different experience than Massively's Mike Foster's. During his time with the game at launch he was, to put it mildly, miserable.
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Seven zombie-infested MMOs for the survivalist in you
Let's talk zombies and post-apocalyptic futures. Sure, the undead have become an overused and watered-down genre, but it's easy to see just why it's so successful -- it practically has something for everyone. The horror fans love it for obvious reasons; there's nothing scarier than the reanimated dead. Sandbox fans and survivalist maniacs love that it represents what happens to society when everything -- and I mean everything -- breaks down. MMO fans adore it because it's all about teamwork and developing a society from the ground up alongside other people. So even though the genre is getting spread a bit thin, it's still as promising as any other. I thought it'd be a good idea to round up many of the current zombie MMOs and pseudo-MMOs so that over the holidays you can celebrate by ignoring your family to bash in a few previously deceased skulls. You can thank me later when all of the training you receive while playing these games helps you survive the coming zombie apocalypse.
Infestation: Survivor Stories (The War Z) surpasses a million players
Infestation: Survivor Stories, the massively multiplayer online zombie survival game that was called The War Z until some pesky trademark issues forced a name change, has over 1.3 million players worldwide. Publisher OP Productions also shared today that that game has 400,000 players monthly, with more than 100,000 players logging in daily. It notes the game launched in December, which is trueish. The War Z launched on Steam this past December to a ravenous zombie horde of issues, and was removed shortly thereafter for false advertisement of game features. The game re-launched in February and currently holds a Metacritic rating of 20.
Hands-on: Infestation: Survivor Stories, aka War Z, is worse than actually being killed by zombies
If there's one thing we know about the games industry, it's that no success goes uncopied. World of Warcraft breaks a million subscribers, everyone starts building WoW-like MMOs. Minecraft showers its creator with enough money to buy his home country, voxel-based crafting games fall like rain. It's just how things go. It should come as no surprise, then, that some studio somewhere would attempt to piggyback on the success of DayZ, Dean Hall's ridiculously popular mod for Arma II. The title, which drops players into a dangerous, zombie-filled open world and challenges them to survive, resonated so immensely with gamers that a clone wasn't so much probable as it was inevitable. But Infestation: Survivor Stories, formerly known as The War Z, is more than just a clone of DayZ. It is a charmless, cynical, and craven rip-off packaged with one of the most sinister microtransaction models ever implemented into a game, and it's developed by a company that has on multiple occasions proven itself to be only shades away from a dedicated fraud factory.
The War Z is now 'Infestation: Survivor Stories'
Publisher OP Productions has changed The War Z's name to Infestation: Survivor Stories, "in part to help fans differentiate the popular game from similarly titled brands," a press release reads. If we were to take a wild guess, that's probably in reference to DayZ, the Arma 2 mod that gained massive popularity and is due out this year as a standalone game. "OP Productions initially filed The War Z trademark early last year, but soon found out from the United States Patent and Trademark Office that the name was comparable to another property," the statement says. "After months of trying to resolve the issue, OP Productions decided the best option to avoid confusion among players was to rename the game. Current players will not experience any change or interruption with the exception of the change in name and game logo." The War Z launched on Steam on December 17, but was quickly removed for advertising inaccurate game elements. The War Z re-launched on Steam in February.
The War Z now known as Infestation: Survivor Stories
Remember The War Z? Hammerpoint Interactive is hoping that you don't, at least when it comes to the game's checkered development and customer service history that includes being temporarily pulled from Steam and suffering a major security breach. At any rate, the firm is looking for a fresh start and has changed the zombie MMO's name to Infestation: Survivor Stories. The War Z's original URL now automatically redirects users to a rebranded website. [Thanks Paul!]
The War Z hack accessed login info, not game accounts
The War Z publisher OP Productions has released the preliminary findings of its investigation into a recent hacking attack on its forums and databases. The publisher has revealed that the hackers gained access to several of the administrator accounts on the War Z forums, which also gave them passwords for the administrators' game accounts. This resulted in deletion of the forums database, as well as "several dozens" of players being banned from the game (and subsequently reinstated).The forum databases do not contain payment information and are hosted separately from the game's servers. They do, however, contain the email addresses and passwords of forum users. The passwords are encrypted, though OP notes that many members "use weak passwords that could be guessed using brute force."The company was unable to find "definitive proof" that game accounts were accessed in any way. In other words, it appears that payment information was not compromised. Any players who use the same password for both the game and the forums are advised to change them, along with any unrelated accounts or services that use the same email address and password.OP has installed new security measures on both its forums database and The War Z's game servers.
The War Z devs to players: 'What should we do with cheaters?'
The War Z devs are considering an interesting take on punishing exploiters. They've been tossing around the idea of allowing people who've been banned for in-game cheating to play on special "jail servers." These servers would be isolated from the game's general servers and would be populated entirely by cheaters. On these servers, cheats would not be interfered with -- that is, exploiters could keep on using their cheats. This has the potential to help the dev team; being able to observe the cheats folks use and run "anticheat experiments" without worrying about banning innocent players would probably give the team a lot of valuable information. On the other hand, though, those cheaters are totally jerks and why should they keep getting to play, right? So the dev team is putting the issue in the hands of the players by posting a survey to see whether the idea is even worth pursuing. You can read the full rationale on the official forums. [Thanks to Paul for the tip!]
The War Z forums and databases hacked, taken offline for investigation
The War Z has been taken offline due to the compromise of its databases and official forums, publisher OP Productions has announced. "We have discovered that hackers gained access to our forum and game databases and the player data in those databases," the statement reads. "We have launched a thorough investigation covering our entire system to determine the scope of the intrusion. This investigation is ongoing and is our top priority."The user information obtained during the break in includes log-in e-mail addresses for the official forums and the game itself, along with the encrypted passwords associated with those addresses. No user payment information was compromised, however, as payments are handled by a third party company that operates outside of OP Production's ecosystem.Despite the fact that "there was absolutely no exposure of your payment or billing information of any kind," according to the statement, the possibility still exists for the stolen encrypted passwords to be decrypted, which could obviously be an issue for anyone that used the same email address and password for The War Z as they did for other, more vital internet accounts. As such, OP Productions recommends that its users change up their passwords.Beyond the promise of future updates, no further timeline was given with respect to when the game may come back online.
Hammerpoint acknowledges War Z security breach, emails and passwords compromised
Hammerpoint has officially responded to the security issues plaguing its War Z zombie shooter. The firm says that no payment information was accessed in the recent breach, but that email addresses and game and forum passwords have been compromised. The data accessed included email addresses used to log in to the forum, forum passwords which we encrypt, email addresses used to log in to the game, encrypted game passwords, as well as in-game character names and the IP addresses from which players log in to the forum and to the game. If you posted other information to the forum it is likely that such data was accessed as well. We do not collect the names or addresses of our gamers so that information was not impacted unless you posted it on the forum. We are investigating whether additional information may have been obtained. Hammerpoint says that it has "engaged outside experts and investigators" and is committing "substantial resources" to improving security. The company encourages The War Z users to change their passwords. [Thanks to everyone who tipped us!]
Rumor: War Z forums compromised, user game accounts might be affected
Hooboy, it's been a while since we've had a proper War Z clusterfunk, hasn't it? Unfortunately for the zombie shooter's playerbase, the latest brouhaha involves some potential account security issues. What we know for sure is that a Hammerpoint forum admin account was compromised, and the company says that "many posts were unable to be restored as a result." There are also rumors that producer Sergey Titov's admin account was affected and that those responsible are now in possession of War Z user info including account and email data. We've contacted Hammerpoint for clarification and will update this post if we receive a response. [Thanks Nephi and everyone who tipped us!]
The War Z returns to Steam
The War Z is back. On Steam. Apparently Valve no longer considers publishing the title on its ubiquitous digital download service a "mistake," and as such Hammerpoint's much-maligned exercise in surviving the zombie apocalypse is now available for 15 bucks. Valve says that it has "collaborated to address community feedback" with Hammerpoint. The company has issued a patch that updates existing customers, and the special refund offering for initial War Z Steam buyers has now concluded.
The War Z returns from the dead on Steam
Back in December, The War Z was pulled from Steam amidst allegations of false advertising and inaccuracies on the game's Steam page – well, these were less allegations and more total lies right there on the page for everyone to see. After a few months of downtime, developer Hammerpoint Interactive's The War Z has returned to Steam.On top of the corrected Steam page for The War Z, there's also a new update available today for existing owners that brings the game up to release-quality status. If you wanted to get in on Valve's apology (see: refund) for selling the game prematurely, that window has now closed.The War Z can be purchased through Steam for $15 on its own right now – or in two more expensive bundles that each toss in varying levels of in-game currency, for $25 and $50.
DayZ standalone version should arrive by April
What everyone seems to be clamoring for these days is a standalone version of DayZ, the hit zombie survival game by Dean Hall. The creator opened up to Reddit on the progress of the version and his feelings on being confused for the maker of The War Z. Hall says that DayZ's standalone version should come out before April, although he allows for wiggle room if something comes up between now and then. The team is being cautious about pulling the trigger on testing, too: "Slowly we'll hand out the first keys and get a few servers running. Then we will reassess. It could go really well and we open up quickly, or it could go badly. Don't expect the tech test to be fun, or very pretty." Past the release of the standalone version, Hall said that he has plans to create a new map that centers around a western city. Hall also addressed his frustration at being confused with The War Z: "I am angry about The War Z. I'm very angry. I'm quite hurt personally because anyone can see how similar the words are, and while the average gamer knows the difference, individual people don't. I've had family members and close friends mistake the difference and confront me about what they believed was unethical behavior they thought I was making."
The War Z attacked, then attacked again
The beat continues for embattled zombie title The War Z. Last night, a Hammerpoint community rep posted on the game's forums regarding a series of ongoing hack attempts. "First we were hit with an attack that would [reset] our DNS IP so that you could not connect," the company said. "This morning we are being hit, again, with a DDoS attack on our login server. We are implementing additional DDoS protection and hope to have this resolved asap. Unfortunately with these types of attacks it is very difficult to give a good time frame of when it will be resolved." If you're still playing The War Z, there are further status updates to be found on the game's official forums.
The Daily Grind: What was the MMO screw-up of the year?
I almost miss the carefree days 2011, when the MMO screw-up of the year was such an easy call: the time when a studio deleted an entire MMO from existence by accident and without any backups. Oops! But 2012? 2012 is trickier. I mean, you've got charging for hotbars, $50 hobby-horses, pandas, NCsoft closing a profitable game, the TERA lawsuit, the implosion of 38 Studios, the clownshoes of The War Z, innumerable banning scandals... we have a lot to choose from. So let's get busy choosing. What do you think was the MMO industry screw-up of 2012? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The War Z executive producer blames problems on the game's success
Sergey Titov, executive producer for The War Z, sent out an email to the controversial MMO's playerbase today addressing the recent problems with the game and the public's opinion of the game. Titov states that there are "hundreds of thousands of players" on the game's servers each day and blames the overwhelming early success of the game for its eventual negative impressions. "I was too focused on how great we are and how a small independent team got their first game to over 700,000 users in a two-month period," Titov says in the email. Admitting that the team made many mistakes in communication and rushing the game out before the holidays, Sergey says that they'll soon be hiring additional community managers and moderators to properly respond to any problems that might arise in the future. You can read the email in its entirety after the cut.
