The whole War Z thing leaves me nonplussed but I do understand why
people who bought it were upset. The game is clearly a beta game and yet
is being sold as a finished product. The game is not only a beta, it is
a VERY rough beta.
I just heard you say that it would not have
mattered if they had labelled it a beta. I think it would have made all
the difference in the world. People would still complain but the
developers and Steam would be able to say “well, its a beta product, it
is a work in progress”.
It should have been labelled as a beta because it is nowhere, and I mean nowhere, near a finished and ready to play game.
You should do a short feature on it Tom.

I’m currently playing Lords of Midnight – I know what you mean about it, Tom. I think it’s mostly an issue with how it provides feedback to the player. It’s determined to render the game-world into purely in-character information, which is interesting, but hard going when you’re starting out.

But there’s definitely something here – I’m going to persevere. It doesn’t feel like any other game I could think of, and there’s some really interesting design going on.

Aww Tom doesn’t like Dwarf Fortress. It is terrible and wonderful at the same time. I have burned more time in this game over the years more than any others. It is just such a complex idea I appreciate what the creators are trying to do. I highly recommend the community developed visual packs. They made the game less eye bleeding for me.

If the substance of the complaints were that War Z is a transparent post-DayZ cash grab, I could completely understand. Instead, there’s this weird fixation on the marketing copy, as posted in Ruskov’s comment.

No hardcore mode???? 50 players on a server instead of 100??? Valve Software, TEAR DOWN THIS GAME!

I haven’t tried pinching my golfer! I shall attempt it forthwith.

Glad you posted that. It turns out the issue was nowhere near as bad as I thought it was. I count exactly three things in that copy that constitute missing features (skills, private servers, and hardcore mode), and I seriously doubt anyone cares whether those things are there. A bad game is still a bad game if its got skill points.

Everything else is a matter of Hammerpoint weaselwording their way through scaled down elements like player count and map size.

Again, if Valve is holding gamermakers to strict standards in terms of misleading text, they’ve got their work cut out for them. But if they’re taking down games that are bad, they’ve also got their work cut out for them. And if they’re only allowing certain business models, I hope they’ll carefully consider all those F2P and microtransaction based games currently available.

The whole issue is just a bunch of people dumb enough to get burned by a bad game and internet savvy enough to make a Reddit thread about it.

Well it is not “misleading” like most of the bad games in Steam.Marketing phrases like “best”,”most”,”ultra” is one thing ,but blatant lies and missing features are even illegal in some countries.
Missing “only” three features out of FOUR listed about the game is ok with you?Also it seems things like skills, private servers, and hardcore mode are important to people enough to pressure Steam and remove it from their store.

And finally you said that they didn’t present it for MMO…yeah it looks like you need to research some topics better.Overall you sounded like you just read some comments on Kotaku and decided to rant about them.
Why are you not happy that at least one shitty game is nuked by steam?!?!?!?!

You didn’t sound the same on the podcast…If that is the reason to bring WarZ rant I can’t completely agree with you.Most of the time what is bad game for you may be great for someone else.For you

“Guild Wars 2 defines the future of online roleplaying games
with action-oriented combat, customized personal storylines, epic
dynamic events, world-class PvP, and no subscription fees!”
,but for me is just a grindy,korean-style,pay to win game.
But we are talking not about misleading advertising,but proven lies.Here is my disagreement with you.
If I sound too rude it’s purely because of the language barrier.

A couple of points I wanted to bring into the discussion on Steam and the content available on the service while listening to this podcast… apologies if this is not new information for you or has been covered previously Tom.

- Valve is a publisher. Steam is a content delivery program/device/system.The actual publisher of the game War Z is Arktos Entertainment according to IGN.

- There are costs associated with releasing games via the Steam service and these costs are paid for by the publisher, or in the case of independent games the developer (who is self-publishing). There are also some technical requirements from Valve for what the game can and cannot do in how it interacts with Steam. These requirements are not as in depth or restrictive as those required for other platforms (such as those released by Nintento, Sony, Microsoft, Apple, etc) and provide a low barrier of entry for small publishers and developers to get their game to a large market.

- When a game is to be released – the final build of a game is uploaded to Steam where it is packed up for a Steam install (versus a typical box copy of a game which would usually use Installshield or a custom installer for your PC or Mac) on Valve’s end. This version gets a quick check to make sure it installs properly but it is ultimately the responsibility of the publisher or developer (or both) to ensure the build is accurate and works. The publisher and developer is also responsible for any technical support that may be needed for game issues, Valve only handles issues related to how Steam interacts with hardware/software on your computer and things like billing/etc.

So in short… just like going to a store (and you make this point Tom) it is the responsibility of the end user to ensure they are buying software they want and that it runs on their hardware. Steam provides information provided by the publisher/developer on the game (and any associated media) but they do not vet all of the information (which may have come up here). If they did you would see a massive decrease in the amount of smaller publishers and developers releasing games on the Steam platform as the costs for doing so would have to be rolled into fees associated with the games release and subsequent maintenance on Steam.

As for why it was removed? It could have been at the request of the publisher due to a bad or wrong build being put up. It could have been because they wanted to do things in their game that violated the end agreement between Steam and the user. It could have been because they didn’t pay up what they needed to so the game was taken down until they do. It could have been a lot of things but in the end it doesn’t really matter. It’s Valve’s world to do what they want on the Steam platform just like Apple takes down apps in their store just like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft control what games can be released on their systems.

It was a bit confusing re: the publisher which is why I wanted to clarify that situation and how Steam interacts with publishers.

I can see how it appears that Valve may have “caved” by pulling the game but I suspect it probably has more to do with something aside from it being a bad game with outdated features/sales text in the marketing box (possibly the threat of a law suit as Chris brings up).

I wonder if anyone has a list of games that have been removed from Steam aside from this one? Would be interesting to look through.