Update:

John Smedley has taken to Reddit to set the record straight regarding H1Z1's controversial paid airdrops.

"I'm going to weigh in here on this subject," writes Smedley. "We've been showing it clearly in all of the streams we have been doing. I made a point of personally doing it during last Friday's streams. We want them to be server events... so we make sure the whole server knows they're coming and I've personally been killed many times after I paid for them myself."So I fundamentally disagree with the argument. In terms of us not being honest about it - untrue to an extreme. Quoting an 8 month old Reddit post after numerous streams and interviews where we've been quite public AND putting it front and center in our 'What to expect document' which was right on the purchase page just makes this blatantly unfair IMO."10 days ago, also via Reddit , Smedley said that "There will be crates with cosmetic only stuff in them. Anything that matters to your survival will be done as recipes so you have to go out and get the stuff for it rather than us handing it to you. We feel the same way you guys do about this stuff. It makes it interesting - I don't think I've ever seen a game do it this way. We're all used to buying something and getting it.. [sic] not getting the recipe for it."If you were unhappy with the state of play, SOE was offering refunds for anyone over the weekend."If you feel like the airdrops are an issue for you, you may immediately request a refund to bwilcox@soe.sony.com - this offer applies till Monday and it applies only to people that have purchased the game as of 10:30am Pacific today 1/16/2015 -Please note that this is going through us, not Steam. Which means it's a little more work so please be patient with the actual refund (it may take a day or two)."Speaking on the subject of H1Z1 being 'Pay to win', Smedley says if you don't like it, don't buy it."So if you think it's [Pay to win] don't buy it. Don't play it. But I have to say wait until you've personally tried them before making the call. We included airdrops in both the $20 and the $40 versions just so you could see for yourselves."

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Zombie MMO H1Z1 may have launched in Early Access on PC, but recent problems are leaving the developers at SOE little time to even sleep.Speaking via the game’s Reddit , SOE president John Smedley explained that issues regarding players being unable to log in have mostly been resolved, with the problem now only affecting around ten percent of users.SOE currently has a long list of bugs the team aims to fix as soon as possible. Smedley goes on to point out that framerate on some of the game’s servers isn’t functioning as it should. That said, a patch should be live to address the issue at some point later today, along with the rebalancing of some hardware.Other issues on the table include text-chat disappearing – although voice chat still works as it should – crashes on both the server and client side, a rare situation where the server starts to use 80 GB of memory, and a host of miscellaneous bugs which Smedley and co. hope to look at when they return to work.“We're going home now," says Smedley, "everyone here is operating on two hours of sleep from last night and we have to send people home but we'll be right back in tomorrow morning and back at it.”SOE recently drew the Internet’s ire following the introduction of paid microtransactions, which have been deemed ‘Pay To Win’ by a vocal portion of the game’s fanbase.“We have made the decision to allow paid-for airdrops into the game with things like guns and other things being randomly selected as part of the airdrop,” writes SOE’s Greg Henninger in the H1Z1 Early Access Introduction.“We’re making them highly contested and building a whole set of rules around this, but you should be aware that our goal is to make this a way to keep things interesting on the servers but still be contested. If these offend your sensibilities just know that they are going to be there. We have gone out of our way to make sure the airdrops are contested in-game and that you can’t simply expect to easily walk about to the airdrop and grab it. Even if you paid for it.”What has users riled up comes from comments made by Smedley eight months prior to this.“We will be selling wearables,” wrote Smedley on how the MMO will be supported. “We felt like this will be a good, fair revenue generator. However - we recognize how important finding wearables in the world is so you'll be able to find and craft a lot of stuff. […]“We will NOT be selling guns, ammo, food, water... i.e. That's kind of the whole game and it would suck in our opinion if we did that.”H1Z1 is currently in Early Access on Steam, with the base game costing $20/£15.We’ll be sure to keep you updated as this story progresses.

Wesley Copeland is a freelance news writer, but you probably already guessed that. For more obvious statements, you should probably follow him on Twitter