"I can assure you that based on what we're seeing and number of people who post bad comments are small percentage..."

The original Steam store text, posted December 17th.

"'Over 100 sq km' falls in '100 to 400' right?"

The updated Steam store text, posted December 18th.

"It's up to Steam to decide if they provide or not refunds."

Some parts of The War Z are still labeled with "alpha test."

"I've asked if we can add [100+ player servers] quickly to public pool."

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

"Reeeeefunds. Reeeeeeeeefunds." (Read to tune of "Braaaaains!")

Wow. Did he say... wow. For once, I'm speechless.

Hammerpoint Interactive's The War Z shot straight to the top of the Steam Top Sellers' list after its surprise "Foundation" launch yesterday, and it's remained there throughout today. Despite its apparent success, all was not well in this post-apocalyptic zombie survival shooter land. Steam users who've bought The War Z, and those who'd bought into the alpha/beta period via the official site, quickly pointed out that the Steam store page made a series of promises that the game itself just doesn't keep. We got in touch with Hammerpoint's executive producer on The War Z, Sergey Titov, who spoke to us via IM to discuss the situation, how this incident came about, and what Hammerpoint plans to do about it. What he has to say indicates what appears to be a combination of a not-so-firm grasp of the English language and a startlingly cavalier attitude toward truth in advertising.Before we dive into the transcript, which we're presenting only slightly edited to repair the overlapping chaos that inevitably happens in IM conversations and patch up some broken English, here's a brief summary of the events that led us here: Where the Steam store page promised multiple maps ranging in size from 100 to 400 square kilometers, buyers found just one roughly 100 square km map. Where it promised 100 players per server, it delivered just 50. Where it promised rentable private servers, levelable skills, and friends lists, there was simply nothing available but menu screen placeholders. That means that thousands -- likely tens of thousands (based on Steam's concurrent players stats) -- purchased this game while under the impression that had features it simply doesn't.While the store information was amended this morning to move most of those claims -- except for the 100-player servers -- to an "upcoming features" section, that's a shocking breach of trust from the Steam's store, which has in the past been reliable when it comes to describing features. We've contacted both Valve and Hammerpoint for comment. Valve has yet to respond regarding its policy for fact-checking developer-supplied feature lists. We'll keep you posted on that, when and if we get a response.Our Steam store description contained information about what game features [were] planned for 2012-early 2013 content updates. Some of the features have been in game for a while, so -- actually two major things -- server rentals and Skill Trees, didn't make [it] into the game yet. This being said we've realized that layout and presentation of this information needs to be changed on the Steam page, which we did today in the morning. After we did it, we [are] still enjoying being [the] Number One top-grossing game on Steam at the moment. So my point is, yes, I'm sure that few players maybe be upset, but I can assure you that based on what we're seeing number of people who post bad comments are [a] small percentage of people who actually bought [the] game.Max players -- I'm not sure why this is even an issue. [The] text clearly stated "up to 100 players." And 50 players [which] we have right now -- is what our players -- our community feels is comfortable level for them to play. We had it at 40, we've raised it to 70, and after that we've asked our players, "What you want this number to be for Colorado map?" Over 90,000 players took [the] survey and most of them said -- 50. This is why this number is set to 50 right now. Yet -- on your own private servers you will be able to set to 100 if you want :). Size of the area, once again, come on -- [the] first map is over 100 sq km :). So [the] text is right. And for our next big map, California, we're testing map size of 420sq km.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? Okay my point is -- 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. This is what The War Z is.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.Hammerpoint, since its early stages of Alpha, provided refunds to players who can't play game for some reasons. We've granted refund to even those players who come top us and said -- your game is shit. And if we went and see that he played like 20 minutes, we've refunded him. Yet if somebody have played like 5-10 hours and decided he doesn't like game - we clearly didn't provided refunds to them. In [the] case of Steam -- it's up to Steam to decide if they provide or not refunds. I mean -- we do not have access to that part of the Steam ecosystem.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 :) And yes game supports 100 players -- heck, it supports actually over 400 players per server as of today. Do we have servers launched with this number of slots? No we don't, because this is not what our players WANT.And we've corrected text on Steam. As I've said -- it was done less than 18 hours after we've started selling game. After that -- after text was changed -- over 7 hours passed.Let me ask you -- what YOU think we should put there, since we do not know what number of slots will be on official servers tomorrow -- 20,30, 50, 70 or 100?Okay good point -- so you think that if we'll have server with 100 players up and running it means we've delivered even if everybody will hate it ?: They do the actual updates based on info we send.We have several private servers with over 100 slots on them. I think we [will] just tune it down to 100 slots and make it available to public. This is right thing to do as I think. We have demo servers with 130 and 150 players on them. But it's internal at the moment. I've asked if we can add them quickly to public pool.I think we'll do that by sending them personalized emails and explaining what to expect from the game now and in upcoming weeks/months. Bottom line - this is issue that affected at most few percent of active War Z audience and thus it should be dealt with on [a] case-by-case basis.Actually we've already posted explanation on our forums that is available to public.I think there's difference between false claims and perception of the text.Ah ok. Yes we're going to post about fact that information on the Store page was presented in incorrect format/layout. That was our mistake obviously. Which we've corrected early morning today.What's difference ? I mean -- I'd love to adjust that BTW -- I just personally don't see what difference does it make? Ie -- THIS IS "THE WAR Z" game. It's not like there'll be "final release" or anything like this.This is what we call it. There's no such thing as "Release" for an online game. More important - you can't just add "foundation release" or any other words to the title of the game on Steam. It's like -- The War Z is a title of the game. We can of course add VERSION in ABOUT GAME section....Nope - there's no such thing as "fully released" for online game. As far as I'm concerned The War Z is in stage when we're ready to stop call it Beta. This is basic version - bones that we're going to add more and more "meat" - features and content in a coming months and hopefully years.They should contact Steam support - we can't refund Steam payments since we do not have access to Steam for that. The way Steam works -- they're acting like any other retail outlet -- they sell the game, get payments from customers, they process refunds, fraud, etc and once in awhile they send us money with reporting on how many units were sold, fraud/refunds, etc... If [a] player bought [the] game from us directly -- they should use e-mail, phone numbers, or support website that's included on their receipts -- this is due [the] fact we're using numerous of payment providers.As for information about Steam webpage -- we'll post [an] official explanation to our forums, and yes we'll apologize for presenting information in a way that allowed different interpretation. Such as "up to 100 player' issue :) -- clearly you think about it one way, myself and other people I just asked think it's totally acceptable to say this. But once again -- I personally think that bottom line is -- do we have happy players or not. At the end this is what we're aiming for.Yes, we can all agree that happy players are the end goal of any game developer. But how you get there does matter, and this kind of behavior, whether it's negligence and miscommunication/mistranslation or (less likely in this case, because if so, why would he even talk to us?) a scam -- is completely unacceptable from game makers. What's even worse, though, is that Hammerpoint has cast a shadow of doubt over the other Steam store pages. Are they really not policed at all? It would seem not. Again, we'll let you know if we hear from Valve on that.The other burning question right now is: is The War Z any good? Our thorough investigation -- aka "review" -- is underway now, so we'll let you know ASAP what we think of it. It should be noted, though, that even this kind of shocking behavior won't automatically deduct points from its score. Especially now that the Steam store page will (hopefully) be accurate by the time our review is posted, the review and score will be based on the condition of The War Z at the time.