Popularity led to arrogance and mistakes, according to Sergey Titov

Dec 28, 2012 10:20 GMT  ·  By

Sergey Titov, the executive producer of the eagerly awaited yet highly controversial The War Z online game, has posted an open letter on the title's forums, apologizing for his arrogant attitude and promising that improvements will be made not just to the game but also to the team managing its community.

The War Z was eagerly awaited by lots of people as it promised to deliver an online experience in which players needed to survive a zombie apocalypse.

Sadly, its release on Steam a few weeks ago caused a huge controversy as the game was being marketed as a final product but was barely in its beta build with many missing features, mechanics, and glitches.

What's worse, the developers at Hammerpoint Interactive started accusing those who criticized the game of lying and deleted any negative comment about the quality or the features of the online title.

Ultimately, the controversy reached a tipping point and Valve took down The War Z from Steam and started handing out refunds to angry gamers.

Now, Hammerpoint executive producer Sergey Titov has posted an open letter to fans on the game's forums, apologizing for his arrogant attitude and saying that the team got blinded by the sudden popularity of the project.

"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," he said.

"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."

Titov thanked those who criticized the game because it ultimately brought him back and made him see things more clearly.

“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. 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."

According to Titov, the community management team will be overhauled and Hammerpoint will take more care when talking with players and answering their questions about the game.