‘The War Z’ Pulled From Steam: Developer Says It Was The Right Decision

Following allegations of false advertising, the survival horror effort The War Z was pulled by the folks at Steam after gamers said the title didn’t deliver on promises.

Valve was quick to address the problem, declaring the game should never have been released in its current state. To right these wrongs, the company explained it would no longer offer the game for sale in its store. Anyone who was disappointed with the title would be issued a full refund for their troubles.

According to Forbes, The War Z executive producer Sergey Titov said Valve’s decision to pull the title was understandable given the circumstances. Titov blames the embarrassing snafu on a serious amount of miscommunication.

“Yes, we think this is the best way to serve their customers and we respect their decision,” Titov explained to PC Gamer. “As you know we’ve been publicly available since October 15. Over that time I think we got used to and took it for granted that players knew what state the game was in and how it was a constantly evolving project, with new features being added on and ongoing basis.”

He added, “Clearly the release on Steam introduced the game to players who never followed ‘War Z’ and we made the mistake of not communicating effectively to the Steam community.”

The Inquisitr previously reported that The War Z was pulled from Steam after a number of gamers said the title didn’t deliver on promised features. After looking into the allegations, Valve determined that Titov and his team at Hammerpoint had misled prospective buyers about what the game actually contained.

Many believe the title was nothing more than a rip-off of the popular DayZ mod, which transforms Arma 2 into a full-on zombie apocalypse. The mod has proved quite popular, which may have prompted Titov to put together The War Z.

The whole sordid situation has brought quite a bit of attention to DayZ developer Dean “Rocket” Hall, who admitted in a recent post on Reddit that the whole thing had taken its toll on him.

This is what Hall had to say:

“I’ve been pretty depressed about the whole situation. From a personal standpoint, this whole “saga” of the development made me seriously question if I wanted to be involved in the industry and I gave serious thought to cutting my losses and not being involved in the project.

“At my Army Discharge medical this week, they noted I now have high blood pressure. Some things in life just aren’t worth worrying about.

“I’ve been getting hammered by a massive amount with requests for information about DayZ release, interviews and my reactions to this and stuff and such – but for my own sanity I retreated and have kept to myself. Right now I’m just at home doing bits and pieces on the DayZ development. The rest of the DayZ team is doing the same.

“I realize that I went back on my word about releasing an update, but went back into my shell for a bit last week, and I’ll come out when the dust is all settled.”

According to IGN, it’s currently unknown when or if The War Z will return to to Steam. Given the amount of attention this whole situation and brought Hall and DayZ, savvy gamers may decided to take their business to Titov’s direct competition.

What do you think about The War Z getting pulled from Steam?