Once upon a time there was a game called Arma 2:combined operations and for that game there was a mod that went by the name of Day Z. The Day Z mod was phenomenally successful and made bohemia interactive, the company that developed it, vasts amounts of money. So much money that they decide to create a stand alone version of the game.

And then Hammerpoint Interactive decided that they wanted to create a similar game by the name of the War Z and as soon as everyone heard the news people started saying that it was an enormous rip off. That they where simply trying to cash in on the success of Day Z and that they even had a similar name as Day Z. This is backed up by images comparing War Z with War Inc (which was the previous game Hammerpoint Interactive had released.) Reddit post

The controversy started when one of the WarZ producers call players faggots for camping, the exact quote being

"I'm trying to play at least couple hours a day every single day. Getting killed a lot, but 80 percent of all kills are 'honest.' I'm just being careless. I'm not trying to hide. 20 percent are shitty kills by faggot's who's spawn camping."

Next came the revelation that the War Z copy pastes terms of service from League of Legends. Reddit post.

Then there was an update where the developers forced people to pay 750 gold coin to create a clan.

Then there were claims by a former moderator that his account had been hacked and that the company are going to abandon the game in 6 months if they don't get enough revenue from it. He also said that the company was banning random accounts to get people to rebuy the game, that there was a massive problem with hacking and that the game is a direct port from war inc. Reddit post.

Turns out most of this was lies, (except that his accout was hacked) and that he just said that because he was mad at being demodded after the hacker used his account and deleted his posts. Reddit post. Apparently

Sergey Titov makes a post on the WarZ forums say that they were considering legal action.

The drama was further escalated when one player experienced problems with the game, and he asked for a refund only to be told that the game was currently in beta and if a refund is given they would be put on a global ban list.

Its also worth noting at this point that the Executive Producer, Sergey Titov also happens to be behind the production of big rigs possible one of the worst games ever made. So bad that its meta critic score is 8 out of 100.

After that there was a heavily upvoted post on /r/gaming say that the developers lied about many of the games features.

Meanwhile there is much argueing on the steam forum. Reddit post.

Popular youtuber Total Biscuits then makes a video about the WarZ, if I was to summarize it briefly I would say that he completely ripped the shit out of it. Of his many complaints about the game the most prominent were

• It looked ugly and had low texture quality
• That the ability to buy in game items for real world cash was ethically questionable and went against the idea of a zombie survival game.
• The game itself was as boring as hell.

/u/Bromazepam points out in the comments that there is something horribly wrong with the reflections when he spots the reflection of a flash light in the water. Later comfirmed by this post on the steam forums.

Edit: Total Biscuit has uploaded an update about the WarZ affair.

Someone makes a reddit post stating that the WarZ has updated its game so that it's even more of a money grab. You now have to wait four hours instead of one for one of your characters to respawn and there is an option for you to pay real money to buy back into the game. They also forced you to sign a TOS which disallows refunds.

Someone starts a petition to remove on steam with over a thousand comments in it.

Developers do an interview with game spy in which he tries to defend the game and it's lack of features. (Spoiler, he fails). Highlights from this interview include such phrases as

Let's be frank: when you read "up to 100 players" -- what does it mean to you personally? I mean, for me it doesn't mean that I will play with 99 other players. Really :)

As well as

There's no such thing as "Release" for an online game.

Edit: He then makes a forum post in which he blames customers for misreading the steam page.

Now what do you do when people start criticizer you, you resort to censorship because that the one thing that the internet really loves. The developers start to remove comments/threads from the steam forums. Valve has to step in to sort things out.

Rhino crunch posts a video stating the game is a scam and that the developers lied.

• He says that the game was only in development recently when it had been previously stated that it had been in development for years.
• He also claims that the game is nothing more than a mod and that they pulled people from War inc to make WarZ
• He was then blocked from there twitter after trying to confront them.

Edit: Rhinocrunch has made another review in which he bacisally says I told you so.

The game is finally removed from steam.

Edit: Valve offers people that have brought the game a refund and issued a statement say:

From time to time a mistake can be made and one was made by prematurely issuing a copy of War Z for sale via Steam. 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.

All this drama surrounding the game currently has resulted in it being given a meta critic rating of 1.1 dispite the developers asking people to vote for them.

Edit: Sergey Titov does an interview with PC gamer in which he talks about the problems the game has had and what has caused them. He all say the game has almost 700,000 players.

Bonus drama: Mods of /r/TheWarZ suggest donating the refund to charity user don't react well. This is what it used to look like before the mods got rid of it. SRD link.

Edit: /r/TheWarZ is currently having fun as they have no active mods left.

^{If there is anything I've missed or got wrong please tell me.}