The War Z pulled from Steam

Hammerpoint Interactive's survival horror MMO, The War Z, has been pulled from Steam after a brief appearance on Valve's digital distribution site.

The game was, for a time, selling very well, but after a flurry of complaints from gamers suggesting that the MMO didn't have all of the features mentioned on the game's page, Valve decided to pull the title.

A representative from Valve told Kotaku: "From time to time a mistake can be made and one was made by prematurely issuing a copy of War Z for sale via Steam. We apologize for this and have temporary removed the sale offering of the title until we have time to work with the developer and have confidence in a new build."

"Those who purchase the game and wish to continue playing it via Steam may do so. Those who purchased the title via Steam and are unhappy with what they received may seek a refund by creating a ticket at our support site..."

Features detailed on the game's page, such as multiple maps (there is, at the current time, only one), skills and social features, are not currently included, and gamers have been protesting in numbers, with many claiming that Hammerpoint and Arktos used false advertising to sell the game.

In a revealing interview with GameSpy the game's exec producer Sergey Titov said: "I'm sure that few players maybe be upset, but I can assure you that based on what we're seeing number of people who post bad comments are a small percentage of people who actually bought the game."

He later suggested that perhaps some customers who bought the game made a mistake in interpreting what the game would offer: "I'm sure there'll be people who will look into small details and will say ‘no I was mislead' where in fact they imagined something to themselves without checking details first."

More content is set to be released in the coming months, which should please customers who decide not to get a refund, but the early launch of the MMO has been marred by issues surrounding product description and transparency. The game's page has been updated to better reflect the content on offer, but that might not be enough to redeem the publisher after the MMO's careless introduction to the market place. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for The War Z to shuffle back onto Steam after this rocky start.