The past few weeks have not been good ones for Sergey Titov, executive producer at Hammerpoint Interactive. His company's debut release, The War Z, has been the center of multiple controversies, which played a large part in the game getting pulled from Steam.
So, in what many are viewing as a last ditch attempt at damage control, Titov has posted an open letter to the game's community. After thanking all their loyal supporters, Titov states:
“I need to admit that we failed to effectively communicate some of our plans and actions to both our existing players and to our new prospective players. This failure to communicate resulted in some very negative feedback from some members of our community, but while it might be easy to label them as “haters” or some other dismissive term, in all honesty this is my fault. I became arrogant and blinded by the early success and quick growth of The War Z, our increasing number of players, numbers we were getting from surveys, etc., and I chose not to notice the concerns and questions raised by these members of the game community as well as others.
This failure is entirely on my shoulders and if anything I owe thanks to that vocal minority and admit that I should have paid attention sooner. I chose instead to concentrate on the bigger picture – my dream of turning The War Z from being a game developed by a small indie team into a large online venture, instead of addressing small things first and staying focused on the game issues. At the end my arrogance led us to the moment, when all those small things finally caught up and created a “perfect storm” that affected all of our community members. For that I’m truly sorry and apologize to all of our community as well as the larger PC gaming community that is not yet playing The War Z.”
Titov then goes on to specify the problems that him and his team have identified, and the course of actions that will be taken to rectify matters.
The letter as a whole does feel heartfelt and sincere, but at the same time, it's impossible to ignore all the indiscretions that got The War Z in such hot water in the first place, and damage might already be done.
One of the first responses pretty much says all that needs to be said:
"The game is great ATM but a lot of people left a while ago."
