CrayZ(?)

So i figured this deserved a little investigation. A rumour has been spreading about The War Z again. This time it has been claimed that a month prior to their release of the game they had been notified that their trademark is invalid due to a prior registration of a trademark. The rumour claims that the prior trade mark was the movie World War Z.

Executive Producer Sergey Titov's reaction to the news, as usual, was a massive confidence in the tiny patch of extremely thin ice he stood on. “It basically says that this application is suspended because there's another application with regards to this trademark.”

Since you can actually look this kind of thing up through publicly available patent application records on the internet I thought I'd take a look into it.

As you can see, Sergey; to his credit, included a handy little guide to looking this kind of thing up. The link he provided didn't actually lead anywhere because the search session expires after a few minutes. One can only speculate as to why he didn't just give a direct link to all of the details about his patent application. but the guide is actually quite useful. So lets start there.

1) Go to uspto.gov: Done

2) Go to TESS - trademark search: Its in one of the tabs up top, but OK, not too hard to find

3) Search for War Z: Also not too complicated.

4) Enjoy LIVE trademark!: Yay, all above board and completed and... Oh wait... What's this?

It turns out that trademarks aren't simply either live or dead. If you look a little deeper into the trademark information by clicking into the TSDR you can see its prosecution history. This is basically just a list of notices of actions taken by the office against the claim. If you've ever dealt with any large american bureaucracy you'll be familiar with this as their standard form of transparency. Given the size and scope of these departments its really to their credit that these facilities function as well as they do.

Under prosecution history you can see that the War Z application is suspended. Just like our good buddy Sergey said it had been, and it has been suspended since the first day the examiner looked at it on the 15th of November 2012. But is it a big deal? What's the reasoning behind the suspension? Well, its right there under documents, you can read the suspension letter. “... a mark(s) in a prior-filed pending application(s) may present a bar to registration of applicant’s mark.“

In short this just means that a previous application exists (read: not granted yet) for a trademark of a similar name  that may conflict with their application (World War Z perhaps?).

Where Sergey is wrong is that he seems to think that, when the application for World War Z goes through, his application will still be approved. This is not the case. When the application for World War Z gets approved (which it recently hasbeen) his application will be declined shortly afterwards and he'll be left with his dick in his hand... again.

I cannot imagine the lengths that Sergey Titov must go through to maintain this fantasy world where everything he touches turns to gold and anyone who says otherwise is part of the greatest feat of gang stalking in all of human history. He clearly wasn't prepared to be in the limelight as much as he has been. But he's been so consistently wrong about the facts surrounding his game that one starts to wonder if he is, in fact, either a paranoid delusional or a pathological liar.

*sometimes wonders if everyone is secretly trolling him*

Sources: USPTO, The War Z Forums

WarZ, WarZ, Give Me Your Answer Do

So the WarZ scandal continues. But I think its reached its absolute low point so its time for me to step in and sum up what's been going on with this incredible success/terrible failure.

WarZ is a game that's been released in reaction to the increased popularity of zombie based games in recent months and years (despite the claims of the developers). With the rise of franchises like The Walking Dead and the unexpected success of the ARMA II mod DayZ "zombie apocalypse sims" seem to be going from strength to strength.

But the developers of WarZ seem to have made some fundamental errors in the realm of public relations and in the broader area of general human honesty and consideration.

The controversy began pretty much as soon as the game was released. In the description sectoin on the steam page for WarZ there were a few glaring discrepancies between what the description was saying and what was actually included in the game.

It was clear that the listed features were supposed to be a part of the game as there was no mention of the game either being an alpha/beta or that some features would be added at a later date. I'm actually willing to put this down to the developers being overzealous in their approach to their description  Their dreams for the game and intentions for the future being mistaken for the actuality of what they had produced and released.

If you've read any of the reactions from the developers to the outcry about the numerous scandals you can tell that these guys are really very impassioned, if a little (read: a lot) misguided, so I can see how this would happen. That is no excuse mind you, they should be expected to maintain some level of objectivity regarding their game, especially when engaging in actual description of its existent features.

But this wasn't enough for the folks over at Hammerpoint Interactive. Once they had secured the top spot on steams best sellers the proceeded to release a patch which I can only assume was cynically retained for this exact purpose. The patch increased the waiting period for re-spawn from one hour (which i already find ridiculous) to 4 hours with the option of paying the equivalent of ~$0.27 (based on their in their in game currency pricing) for a reduced re-spawn time.

Add to this their Steam forum administrators constant banning of the accounts of critics. According to one user if they ban you from the Steam forums, they also ban your game account, though this is unconfirmed. This quickly becomes more than enough to make your blood boil already.

So how do the developers respond to the questions that have been levelled against them about their shady practices? Well, they blame the customer of course. They haven't released a statement about their censorship or sudden micro-transaction yet but Sergey Titov had this to say on the subject of the wildly misleading and inaccurate description on the steam page.

"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. I'm sure that Steam have it's refund policies that should handle those situations."

So there you have it. If you read things that are presented as facts and assume they are facts its your own fault because the person who wrote them can just retroactively say "we meant something else"

*is now worried he will have to retroactively say he meant something else*


***UPDATE***

Steam has pulled WarZ from their service. While people who already purchased the game can still play it, it is no longer available for purchase. Those who wish to continue playing may do so but those who are dissatisfied with their game may create a ticket through steam to get a refund. 
Valve had this to say to 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 here."


Our old buddy Sergey also weighed in saying:

"We're making sure that our Store page is 100% correct this is why."
"Bottom line—our end goal is to have satisfied and not angry customers, so this is more important for us than everything else."

It seems to me like he's trying to make it sound like they only took the page down to make changes to the page itself, while steam are saying they took the page down to make changes to the game. I'm starting to believe that Hammerpoint really didn't intend for any of this to happen and Sergey is just a completely useless communicator.

Sources: Gamespy, Escapist Magazine, Kotaku, Reddit