The CEO of Gray Zone Warfare developer Madfinger apologizes for releasing a hotfix that introduced new issues to the early-access shooter, and for ignoring feedback from players. The realistic, tactical FPS game’s community had warned of the issues, but because the Madfinger development team couldn’t reproduce the problems, the hotfix was launched unchanged, resulting in a variety of in-game issues.
CEO Marek Rabas has promised Gray Zone Warfare players that Madfinger “will always trust our community from now on and improve our pipelines to limit these problems.” It turns out the performance issues in the shooter were caused by “a wrong merge, and unwanted changes were propagated to the hotfix branch.” The current hotfix is being rolled back and a new one will be released soon, hopefully without more problems.
This isn’t the first issue the new FPS game has experienced since its launch back in April. Gray Zone Warfare initially received terrible Steam reviews but still managed to sell 400,000 copies in just two days, showing it’s worth trying things out for yourself. Despite the issues, the new tactical shooter has continued to sell well, nearing almost one million units shipped as of June.
“Please accept our apologies,” Rabas says. “We released a hotfix that introduced new issues to the game. We’re going to roll back and will issue a new hotfix soon. We messed up mostly because we didn’t trust our community when they reported performance issues. We couldn’t reproduce it on our end, and after checking every commit, we were sure none of the fixes could affect client performance.
“This was a big mistake. It turned out to be a wrong merge, and unwanted changes were propagated to the hotfix branch. We have multiple branches, not only for the game but also for Unreal Engine.
So, lesson learned the hard way. We will always trust our community from now on and improve our pipelines to limit these problems. Please excuse us. We will do better next time.”
Responding to the apology, players have been largely positive and understanding. “We appreciate the honesty, thanks for being swift and acknowledging this within a day,” one player says. “I wish other companies would be so transparent and honest,” another writes. Other players ask if they are going to be granted in-game compensation for any items lost due to the issues. “I think we currently don’t have a system to do this,” Rabas replies. “It’s one thing we need to work on.”
Gray Zone Warfare offers ultra realistic FPS matches where opposing teams have to scour a large island with PvE and PvEvP modes. This is a game where a single shot can drop you before you can even blink, so situational awareness, teamwork, and remaining calm under pressure are essential for people wanting to give the shooter a try.
Be sure to check out some of the other best multiplayer games around right now, or maybe the best battle royale games if you want FPS action on a large scale.
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