The Early Access launch for Sony Online Entertainment’s zombie survival MMO H1Z1 is not feeling so good right now as many who paid for the Alpha discover a certain promise ‘has been broken’.
SOE president John Smedley had said the game’s micro-transacting airdrops would only contain ‘cosmetic’ items and treats, however the reality is quite different: they contain guns and ammo.
A backlash immediately ensued and has gotten so tense with the community that SOE is now refunding anyone who bought the game ”as of 10:30am Pacific today 1/16/2015”. Originally the refunds were solely through Sony themselves but they’ve since asked Valve to allow self-refunds through Steam.
The refunds are handled through Steam and the $20 for the EA title is put into the Steam Wallet. An email from Sony Online customer service VP Brad Wilcox details how to get your H1Z1 refund:
In order to get your refund for H1Z1 Early Access please follow the below steps:
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Log into Steam
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Go to Account Details
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Go to Store Transactions a. Find your purchase of H1Z1 in the Store transaction and click on the “Request a Refund” link.
The refund period will end this Monday, January 19th. If you feel SOE has told quite the porky over their plans for H1Z1 and not supporting a pay-to-win model, then now would be the time to get your money back. Would could have been a great new IP for Sony is now going to struggle to repair its image.
Check out the ‘No questions asked refund policy’ Reddit post for more.
As for the accusations themselves of being led astray by SOE, Smedley disagrees:
”We’ve been showing it clearly in all of the streams we have been doing. I made a point of personally doing it during last Friday’s streams. We want them to be server events… so we make sure the whole server knows they’re coming and I’ve personally been killed many times after I paid for them myself. So I fundamentally disagree with the argument. In terms of us not being honest about it - untrue to an extreme. Quoting an eight month old Reddit post after numerous streams and interviews where we’ve been quite public AND putting it front and center in our ‘What to expect document’ which was right on the purchase page just makes this blatantly unfair IMO.”
”So if you think it’s P2W don’t buy it. Don’t play it. But I have to say wait until you’ve personally tried them before making the call. We included airdrops in both the $20 and the $40 versions just so you could see for yourselves.”
”But to clear up the misconceptions - 1) You cannot call in airdrops until the servers are one quarter full. 2) You can’t call in airdrops without generating a ton of zombie heat. 3) the airdrops are random in what they deliver. 4) you are not guaranteed to get a single thing out of the airdrop you called in. You could die trying and you’re out the money. 5) We fly the plane in very slowly and loudly.. we also stream green smoke from it you can see from very far away. This is all I’m going to say on the subject. We’ve been straight about it. We’ve called attention to it publicly and it’s something we’ve decided we want in the game. It makes it more fun. It can shake things up. Please don’t judge based on knee jerk reactions. Try it. Or watch more streams with people doing it.”
While not as simple as paying money to get an airdrop teeming with guns and ammo, it still calls a little too close for some. Smedley continues and announces changes being made over the coming days:
1) Dramatically widening the radius they come in - it’s too small from what we’re observing.
2) Making sure the chance for guns is a much lower chance so they are much more rare.
3) Upping the minimum number of people on a server to even allow air drops. It’s set at 50 right now and we’re going to at least double it. We are serious about these being server events and contested.
4) Making the plane fly even slower.
Has the H1Z1 community overreacted or are they calling a spade a spade? Currently it’s available on Steam Early Access for £14.99 / $19.99 if you want Alpha access now, but it is free-to-play.
