The WarZ hack recently was an unfortunate thing but user details weren’t compromised according to OP Productions, the publisher of the game. The same thing happened with the PSN hack but that was a massive attack which Sony successfully dodged but there were no reports of compromised credit card details.

“We did not find definitive evidence that our game account database was accessed. They were able to ban up to several dozens of players randomly,” the publisher’s statement read (via Eurogamer)

“We disabled the hacked accounts, identified the wrongly banned players and reversed those bans within hours of the attack. We are continuing to invest significant resources to make our system even more secure.

“We all know that the online world is never 100 per cent secure against aggressive and sophisticated hackers. This experience has been a humbling one for your War Z Team. We have recommitted ourselves to providing a secure and enjoyable game for our players. We will keep working to improve our game and our security in keeping with that commitment. We are sincerely sorry that this incident occurred and greatly appreciate the loyalty of our players.”

This is good news for people who were worried about their details being compromised, since it doesn’t look like it was.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Hammerpoint Interactive, the developer behind The WarZ, has thought of locking up cheaters in a separate server or jailed server.

“If you’ve been banned from the game, you won’t be able anymore to create or join clans, participate in leaderboards, or play the game with the general population, but you’ll be able to play among other banned players on special set of jail servers. Since you’ve already been banned from the game, you can keep using all of your cheats there, but you may expect that all other players are using them too,” the post on the MMO’s forums read.

They also state that the cost of all these servers won’t be much and they may be able to find out latest cheats and ways to counter them.

“We’re talking about one or two physical servers. Cost of hosting those are much lower than having completely separate dedicated game setup and servers and paying thousands of dollars to testers to play against each other using cheats on dedicated servers to be able to perform anticheat development and testing. So doing this will free uo resources for an actual game development.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Via VG247

On the official forums, he posted: “I need to admit that we failed to effectively communicate some of our plans and actions to both our existing players and to our new prospective players. This failure to communicate resulted in some very negative feedback from some members of our community, but while it might be easy to label them as “haters” or some other dismissive term, in all honesty this is my fault.

“I became arrogant and blinded by the early success and quick growth of The War Z, our increasing number of players, numbers we were getting from surveys, etc., and I chose not to notice the concerns and questions raised by these members of the game community as well as others.

“This failure is entirely on my shoulders and if anything I owe thanks to that vocal minority and admit that I should have paid attention sooner. At the end my arrogance led us to the moment, when all those small things finally caught up and created a “perfect storm” that affected all of our community members. For that I’m truly sorry and apologize to all of our community as well as the larger PC gaming community that is not yet playing The War Z.”

Will Hammerpoint and The War Z be able to bounce back? Time will tell.

Source: GIBiz

This was confirmed in the original description of the game on Steam (which has since changed), and when Gamespy interviewed Sergey Titov of Hammerpoint on the same issue, he stated that “online games are [a] living breathing GAME SERVICE. This is not a boxed product that you buy one time. It’s evolving product that will have more and more features and content coming it”. While this isn’t all that wrong, it wasn’t really the issue at hand, which was that Hammerpoint had effectively gamed – and exposed – Steam’s under-administration in accepting such titles for its benefit.

Such a scenario reminds me of Ben Affleck’s film Argo to be honest. It’s a movie about making a movie, as Tony Mendez and his team readied a script, storyboards, actors, a public reading, a registered production company, even office space and set off to Iran for location scouting.

The catch? “Argo” was fake, its existence simply created to evacuate 5 United States Embassy employees who had been caught in the crossfire of a rather violent revolution that was occurring. But it served its purpose, and all 5 hostages were returned safely to the United States. It’s hard to blame the Iranians – the farce was that deftly crafted.

However, it affords a lesson that not only The War Z but the entire gaming industry exemplifies. It reminds us about the severe lack of a quality assurance and administration authority within the industry.

Titles, be they indie games or AAA blockbusters, are left to the scrutiny of the developers and publishers when it comes to releasing them to the public. Do you delay the game and polish it further (read: fix all the unfixed bugs) or release it and follow it up with patches? Do you take a temporary hit in credibility by having the hype of the game’s release overshadow any game-breaking bugs? Do you issue public apologies when gamers are unsatisfied?

Did Ubisoft apologise for the numerous issues plaguing the release of Assassin’s Creed 3? Did Activision apologise for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 failing to run properly on the Playstation 3 and PC – something which the original Black Ops suffered from as well? Did we get any apologies from Vigil Games or United Front Games for the little bugs and frame rate issues in Darksiders 2 and Sleeping Dogs respectively?

We sure as hell didn’t get any apology from Square Enix when Final Fantasy XIII showed up sans any open world, compelling story or actual fun gameplay (it’s rather doubtful they respond to any kind of feedback other than sales figures, truth be told. Hence FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns).

One could make a case that none of these games promised features and then ended up not delivering them. But isn’t one of the prerequisites of a game to function normally? Aren’t we buying games with the knowledge that they won’t glitch out on us, or suddenly crash, or just fail to play at all?

Alas, these are the current curses of the current gaming industry. Wherever you are, it’s important to either be there first or be there on time. Overtake a similar property and cash in before it does, or meet the deadline being hyped by the enormous PR campaign surrounding title.

After three months of patching, who’ll be complaining in a year when the next sequel comes along? When Gamespy’s interview was published, Hammerpoint had confirmed that 100 players per server was now possible in The War Z. Would anyone who hadn’t heard of the controversy and decided to pick the game up in the next few months have cared if it were missing a few features at launch? Are they really wrong for claiming one thing, and then delivering slightly less when the entire industry is making money hand over fist with the same practice?

It’s an elaborate ruse, a risk that consumers take with each game, and really, it’s tough for systems like Steam to pick up on them immediately (it’s not even like they were looking for this particular group of Embassy hostages or droids or hobbits or what have you). Any system will have cracks for miscreants to slip through – it’s just that the size and scope of some screenplays makes them harder to catch. And when The War Z is committing the same crime as many developers have been for years – many which still do today – then should the zombie equivalent of “Argo f**k yourself” really make us seek reparations?

The War Z was actually suspended in November by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, but they continued to keep quiet and didn’t tell anyone about it. Why? Because they have to change the name because of the suspension.

The World War Z is a movie by Paramount Pictures and it features zombies as well so it will get the obvious treatment of taking hold of the trademark. Here are their reasons for rejecting the trademark.

“The trademark examining attorney has searched the USPTO’s database of registered and pending marks and has found no similar registered marks that would bar registration under Trademark Act Section 2(d).  TMEP §704.02;see 15 U.S.C. §1052(d).  However, a mark(s) in a prior-filed pending application(s) may present a bar to registration of applicant’s mark,” the according to the document.

“Therefore, action on this application is suspended until the earlier-filed referenced application(s) is either registered or abandoned.  37 C.F.R. §2.83(c).”

It seems after the removal from Steam and other things that transpired with them, this is a lesson for other developers not to copy stuff and if you do copy, which is fine, at least make sure to put some significant effort into it and churn out a quality product.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

WarZ tumblr via GC

It’s a common logic that you don’t mess with the Internet or attempt to fool people by feeding them rubbish. Sergey Titov, who also has to his credit the worst rated game of all time called ‘Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing’, has one more masterpiece to boast of: The War Z.

Now critics may not have passed their official judgement on the game, considering there are hardly any reviews out for it, but their verdict is clear when you comb Twitter and their opinion pieces on this whole controversy.

I am not fond of the Metacritic user score, I find it completely pointless since people have been known to promote their products or sabotage them based on their agenda. The backlash against the game on Metacritic is quite hilarious.

The game has a 1.2 user score out of 1950 ratings, but since those numbers are bullshit anyway, let’s read what people have to say about this game.

• If you are going to blatantly rip off a competitors title, at least do it right. Graphics are horrid, gameplay is broken and there is no intentions of fixing any of this other than broken promises.

• This is a scam, nothing but a cheap cash in of DayZ’s success. Do yourself a favor and don’t support this dishonesty by buying this garbage. Save your money.

• I usually believe that people give zero ratings to games just to pull them down because they are massively over hyped (see Halo, Call of duty etc), however zero in the War Z actually means zero.

• Quite possibly the worst game ever made. The graphics look like they are from a Sega Dreamcast at best and this is 2012 making these graphics completely unacceptable. Just so everyone knows, the screenshots shown are not taken from the game. And the last thing every potential player needs to know, there is a 1 HOUR RESPAWN TIMER when you die and you LOSE ALL YOUR GEAR!

• Big Rigs comes to mind when playing this game. It’s unfinished and plagued by bugs, exploits and hacks. At first I believed the promises of the developers and decided to just wait it out, but Hammerpoint is like that prostitute you just paid and then she admits to you that she has no vagina, but too bad, she runs off with your money anyways.

Err… OK, I guess that’s enough for now. Maybe you could go and read some of the positive comments if you’re bored. Yes, they don’t look legitimate at all.

The War Z has been in the news a lot recently, after its false advertisement controversy, and it was even pulled off Steam by Valve.

One of the developers with the username RussianKalibe over at The War Z’s forums said he’s “embarrassed” about the entire situation.

“I am embarrassed for the Steam situation,” he said. ” “If I said I wasnt, I would be purely lying.”

However, he wants to tell everyone that this controversy hasn’t deterred the devs and that the team is not “giving up” on the game or “quitting” the project.

“However I want to stress out the fact that, NONE of US will be giving up, or have any intention to give up on our game,” he emphasized. “It’s out of question and discussion.

“Its ok to have disagreements on the team, but we are not quiting or killing the project. Sergey did an interview with the PC Gamer, and answered the important questions. As for me and my team, we have a lot of work ahead of us.”

You can read the aforementioned PC Gamer interview here, if you want.

Well, I’d be embarrassed too if I was in the development team. But good to see they’re still not quitting.

[NowGamer]

There’s a lot of potential to make War Z a runaway hit, but at this point it’s a slow wandering zombie. Running from zombies can be well and fun, but at one point you want to turn around and fight them. You also want to get to safe zones where you can trade and upgrade or even find the basics to survive. You want to go on missions to save people, kill zombies, maybe find a cure, and maybe even save the world. None of that is currently offered in War Z.

Instead you get pretty much nothing. The game does not start with an intro or back story. The game does not come with basic tools like a default weapon. The game does not come with a safe zone where you can find supplies, a place to crash, and NPC’s to give missions. There isn’t a cure, there isn’t a way to save the world. There’s only two things; zombie and bandits.

In my experiences I died of either zombies or bandits, which are other players but sadly I died eight times by bandits and only twice by zombies. I found a lot of people in chat complaining about how some bandits have hoarded the good weapons and were picking off other players. When you die, you lose everything in your pack, and although a hammer is pathetic as a weapon, when you come back and can’t even find that, you’ve got no chance for survival. Some bandits hid outside the safe zones and picked off people, and one bandit decided to test out their sniper weapon on me, even though a zombie was only about twenty feet behind. They took my hammer.

At this point the punishment for dying is also severe. Dying at the hands of a juvenile bandit is pretty frustrating, but you can’t revive your character for a real time hour. When you come back in, your backpack is empty. Your hammer, flashlight, bag of chips, and bottle of water that you actually spent over an hour finding and are pretty useless anyway are gone. Oh, and sometimes you can respawn in town near a hoard of zombies, and you have nothing to defend yourself with, or maybe spawn into a default area where a bandit with a shotgun was picking off people logging in. People who literally come back in with nothing. Nothing but content for such an exploited game.

I understand the ideas set forth by Hammerpoint. On their site they basically said they want to make War Z open and allow the players to create their own missions. Although I like the idea of opening the content up in this way, you have to remember your audience. If they spend more time killing each other, there isn’t much room for growth. By not having any structure, it’s like giving a monkey a stick and expecting it to build a house. It’s a great idea, but in all likeliness, the monkey is going to turn around and hit the other monkey on the head.

War Z has all the potential to be a great MMO, but at this point it’s an undefined mess with monkeys in charge. The game needs stop the player killing and create some sort of structure that has at least some basic missions and safe zones worth going to. If Hammerpoint doesn’t put the hammer down and make some major changes War Z is going to push the zombie genre past the brink of cool, much in the same way of WWII games. Worst yet, War Z is on track to being the worst MMO, which might take some heat off of Final Fantasy 14.

This game was previewed on the PC.

The beta begins on October 31st, but depending on which package you go with on preordering, it could be as soon as October 15th. Both will be discounted till October 20th and include Survivor ($19.50 USD) and Pioneer ($29.99 USD) The latter includes $15 of in-game currency, a special forum badge identifying player as an early, pioneer community member, and one-month of “Stronghold” map server hosting.