Hard evidence: “War Z” development only lasted 6 months

A clever reader of this blog was able to fetch a quote from one of the “The War Z“‘s developers, namely it is Roman Stepanov aka “RomanS” (Art director at arktos entertainment) talking about a new project (“The War Z” !) they were starting may 2012.

This is finally hard evidence that this game has not been developed “for a couple of years” or atleast 2, “The War Z” has been developed in only 6 months !

But read for yourself, ironically this quote is out of a “Arma 2: Day Z” (That mod they didn’t copy at all) thread on a third party forum:

“We have the engine
We have artists
We have programers
We have designers
We have tech

We’ve been working on our own zombie for PS3 (Sony’s request) for a while.

Would you guys play this if we make it on PC as a huge open world like in Chernarus. With lots of towns, villages, drivable vehicles, clans, trading merchants, resources, etc?

We are thinking about doing this right now. This way you wont have problems with servers, buggy environment and combat system, and all the exploration zombie surviving you want

How about it?”

Roman Stepanov aka “RomanS” on 16th may 2012
Source: http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?212608-ArmA-II-DayZ&p=6177919&viewfull=1#post6177919
Link to his linkedin to proof he is a developer at arktos entertainment: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/roman-stepanov/4/26b/504

There you got it, but let’s be fair towards “The War Z”, let’s say at this time point they already started developing the game since the whole of may, then you get about 6 months of development from start until end of alpha and getting “live”. Wow !

Some people are confused by “Hammerpoint Interactive“‘s misleading claims and moderators of their forums making false statements: The game right now is not in alpha or in beta. There is no beta, the developers simply dropped it out of the cycle and instead went “live” (as they call it) directly after the alpha. That is the reason why you will not find anything that says that this game is in alpha or beta status on their website and their buysite.

Here are statments from the executive producers on the games current status:

“There’re no preorders anymore - not since October 31st . Game is live.”

-Sergey Titov
Source: http://forums.thewarz.com/showthread.php?67660-Wipe-new-packages-new-features-roadmap-new-antihack-Steam-version-!/page2&p=1034822#post1034822

“We started pre orders on the 2nd or 3rd of october. We opened the game for the Pioneer and Legend buyers on the 15th of october.
And since the 31st of October the game is wide open. People can play it.
The game is out there from our perspective.”

-Sergey Titov
Source: http://forums.thewarz.com/showthread.php?67660-Wipe-new-packages-new-features-roadmap-new-antihack-Steam-version-!/page2&p=1034822#post1034822

Now to everyone playing “The War Z” this gives atleast one answer as to why this game is missing so many features and is infested with bugs and hackers - This game simply has been pushed out onto the market in the fastest possible way to generate money.

Which leads to the next interesting point, as Sergey Titov stated in one post there are about 500.000 players right now registered on “The War Z”. Now let’s take the current prices and not the higher pre-order prices with which they ripped pre-orderers off and do some math:

There are 3 packages: $15 - $25 - $50

Let’s say that only 10% opted for the most expensive one, 20% for the mid-priced and the rest opted for the low priced package.

That makes a revenue of about 10 MILLION DOLLARS for 6 months of work. And that is even calculated with conservative numbers.

10 million dollars for 6 months of work, obviously “Hammerpoint Interactive” was very keen on bringing this game out even when it is missing most of its features and being plagued by bugs.

Just to put the 6 months of development into perspective: Even a simple shooter such as “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” with around 100 people working on it took 2 years time of development. “The War Z” just has a couple of developers and put their game out in 6 months - Obviously because most content and the engine was recycled from their past game “War Inc”.

This evidence is quite clear and it once again proves that the developers have been flat out lying about their game. It’s time for “Hammerpoint Interactive” to answer some questions, and to tell the community of “The War Z” why they mislead and lied to them.

BTW “RomanS” was also the developer who got caught and busted for talking about cheating ingame here: http://www.hvk-gaming.com/forum/m/8970566/viewthread/4808688-warz-developer-caught-cheating