Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

When Hideo Kojima was rumoured to be leaving Konami, there was widespread controversy about the company’s treatment of him and the fate of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. At launch, The Phantom Pain was beloved by critics and generated massive amounts of sales. However, hardcore fans expressed their disdain over the ending and overall story. The biggest evidence of the game’s unfinished state, however, was the missing Chapter 3 and Mission 51. Though the game’s ending was in Mission 46, Mission 51 was included as special non-playable story content…in the collector’s edition. Konami clarified that the content was cancelled before being finished but the sequence of events and their impact on the overall lore left many fans angered. Unfortunately, the game didn’t receive any post-launch DLC either to help patch in the gaps.

The War Z forums have been hacked according to an alert posted by OP Productions.

There’s a lot of things that have been exposed like email addresses, forum passwords, game passwords, in-game character names and IP addresses. This seems like a full blown hack.

However, credit card numbers should not be exposed because OP Productions have said that they use a third party for it.

They have told users to change their passwords and also revealed that according to their research they were not using strong passwords.

“This has been a humbling experience for us. While we all know that there is no guaranty [sic] of security on the internet, our goal is to try our very best to protect your data. We sincerely apologize.”

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Via Eurogamer.

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 developers Hammerpoint Interactive failed to make a proper apology after they were alleged of falsely advertising their game on Steam. They did apologize first- they were sorry that people “misread” the game’s info.

Well, now, finally, they’ve made a real apology.

“We completely understand that players were upset and felt that we mislead them,’ said Sergey Titov, The War Z’s executive produce in an interview with PCGamer. “We absolutely take responsibility for these inconsistencies.”

“Ultimately, it’s our responsibility and no fault of Steam at all,” he continued. “The description on Steam was basically reflecting a list of all the features that either our engine is capable of ( like number of players per server—which can be much higher than 100 for example) as well as our immediate development tasks. The big problem was with some internal communication. As a result of this mistake, our company board reviewed the situation today and we will be making some changes in our structure and with some of our key team members.”

So people are gonna get fired. Yikes.

Another one of the developers in the team said that he was embarrassed about the entire Steam situation, after Valve pulled the game off its service.

[Source]

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]

The War Z was just now accused of false advertisement, and the developer Hammerpoint Interactive came into the limelight thanks to some very controversial comments. Now, Valve has pulled the game off Steam, saying that they made a mistake releasing it “prematurely.”

“From time to time a mistake can be made and one was made by prematurely issuing a copy of War Zfor sale via Steam,” Doug Lombardi, Valve’s vice president of marketing told Polygon. “We apologize for this and have temporary removed the sale offering of the title until we have time to work with the developer and have confidence in a new build. Those who purchase the game and wish to continue playing it via Steam may do so. Those who purchased the title via Steam and are unhappy with what they received may seek a refund by creating a ticket at our support site here.”

Well, looks like that’ll only fuel the fires.

Stay tuned, we’ll keep you updated.

The MMO, which some would say is a DayZ clone, was released two days ago and rapidly jumped to the top of Steam’s sales charts. But people have reported that several features that were promised are not even present in the game. These features include skills that can be leveled up, rentable private server and friends lists.

GameSpy also reports that The War Z’s Steam page promises maps ranging in size from 100 to 400 square kilometers to , but the game itself only features a single 100 square km map. The advertisement also claims that the game allows 100 players per server, whereas it actually allows just 50.

Hammerpoint has now moved these features to the Upcoming Features section, but they’re refusing to properly apologizing, saying that they’re sorry that people “misread” the information.

“A number of customers that felt that information about the game was presented in a way that could have allowed for multiple interpretations,” he said on The War Z forums. “We’ve taken steps to correct this and format information presented on our Steam Store page in a way so it provides more clear information about game features that are present in the Foundation Release and what to expect in the coming weeks.

“We also want to extend our apologies to all players who misread information about game features.”

That doesn’t seem like much of an apology, to be honest.

Concerning the part of the description (that has since changed) which stated “up to 1000 players”, Titov responded, “Okay — if text is saying “up to 100 players” — yes, I may imagine situation when somebody will say “okay it HAVE TO BE 100.” “Over 100 sq km” falls in “100 to 400″ right?”

Though he tried to make the point of The WarZ being an ever evolving product, he failed to mention why the description mentioned certain features that were presently available when they were in fact not. His response to this?

“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’m sure that Steam have it’s refund policies that should handle those situations.”

Have you played The War Z yet? How is it? Tell us in your comments.

[CVG]