Last year, we reported on several things that went wrong for troubled zombie survival horror MMO War Z. First there were accusations of similarities to the similarly-named DayZ. Then it was discovered the War Z’s Steam store page contained inaccurate claims about non-existent features amounting to false advertising, and developers Hammerpoint edited the game’s product description to more clearly delineate between upcoming and existing content and issued an apology. Valve then investigated The War Z’s Steam forum following complaints from players claiming to have been unfairly banned.
Today they renamed War Z to “Infestation: Survivor Stories“.
Our own Steve Hogarty investigated the map size of what is now called “Infestation” way back, when people were suspicious of the claims the game was making. He found that thoughHammerpoint claimed that their first map was 100 square kilometres in area, when in fact, after some time spent walking around the map (Steve likes to stretch his legs virtual style) he found that the map only spannedaround 10 square kilometres in real-world terms.
It was also reported thatThe War Z’s Terms of Service made explicit references to League of Legends’ currency system and there was evidence on the 17th October last year suggesting Hammerpoint have redacted even more explicit mentions of the game since their copy/paste job was discovered.
Not tohammer thepoint or anything, but it seems like the brand War Z has had a lot of bad rep attached to it, so it’s not surprising that they’ve decided to change the brand a bit. Jeremy also reported that Sergey Titov, the game’s executive producer said that they didn’t really mind being compared to DayZ at all. “We don’t mind being compared to DayZ at all,” Sergey Titov said. “In fact we are fans of the mod. Ultimately, we hope that gamers will end up playing both The War Z and the DayZ standalone.”
On the game’s Facebook page, a reason was given for the name change.
“This change has come about primarily as a result of some confusion and trademark issues with a similarly titled property. While we were reluctant to rename the game so long after launch, especially with nearly 1 million registered players, it was ultimately decided to be in the best interest of our existing community as well as future players in order to eliminate confusion. Please rest assured that this will in NO WAY affect you as players. The only difference you will see is the change in logo and website. There will be no interruption of service or change in content.”
The support email addresses still have War Z in them though.