Earlier this month, those helping test the upcoming World of Warships were offered a sweet deal: pay a few bucks for a Humble Bundle and they’d get some swag for the game, including one of its better ships. Loads of fans jumped on the chance. Ten days later, though, the deal has been altered.
On June 16, in this post made on the game’s forums, a representative of Wargaming (Warships‘ developer) clearly states that those purchasing the bundle would get the powerful Soviet warship Murmansk, and even better would be able to keep the ship when the game shifts from closed to open beta. Lots of players took them up on that offer.
Today, a new post on the forums denies this, saying that “we had only ever intended to treat this partnership with Humble Bundle as an opportunity to preview premium World of Warships content and to help drive donations to charity.” Oh. The Murmansk wouldn’t be carrying over into open beta after all.
Fans on the game’s forums and Reddit are furious, repeatedly accusing Wargaming of deception, fraud and of having performed a bait-and-switch, and are demanding they receive the bonus items they’d originally been promised. In response, Wargaming says:
Being involved with Humble Bundle, an organisation that supports a wide range of charities such as the ESA Foundation, Child’s Play, and Video Game History Museum are a noble cause, and one we’ve always wanted to be a part of. Unfortunately, we bungled this first-time effort. This is on us, not Humble Bundle.
Last week we said you’d get the Murmansk on your accounts after we went into Open Beta. That was incorrect; we had only ever intended to treat this partnership with Humble Bundle as an opportunity to preview premium World of Warships content and to help drive donations to charity.
While we were quick to work with Humble Bundle to revise messaging on their web portal on June 17, we neglected to revise our own forum thread topic from June 16. Should we have left that thread unaddressed for a week? No. That’s our failing in effectively communicating back to you.
We screwed up, plain and simple, and we hope you understand that we’re sincerely sorry. This was never our intention and we hope that you can forgive us for this blunder.
Note the bolded text (emphasis is mine). Accessing the site today shows that Humble Bundle’s site does indeed reflect the “revised messaging”. But fans of the game weren’t congregating on Humble Bundle’s site, they were communicating and receiving their information on the game’s own forums, which until today was telling them they’d get to keep the Murmansk (which is normally a premium ship costing real money).
The Murmansk in happier times.
In relation to the accusations that Wargaming performed a bait-and-switch, taking customer’s money then refusing to hand over the promised items, the company’s statement says:
All transactions were handled directly through Humble Bundle storefront, and proceeds were given to charities in the amount that players specified their donations to be distributed. Wargaming did not profit from the sale of the E3 Digital Ticket Humble Bundles.
Whether Wargaming’s actions were malicious or accidental should be irrelevant; when confusion and disappointment are caused by a company’s own admitted actions (“Unfortunately, we bungled this first-time effort…This is on us”), the least they could do is make it up to the players affected. Especially when we’re dealing with digital items.
After all, if the forum post in question had said “Our bad, here have the items anyway”, we wouldn’t be here reading this…
Comments
9 responses to “Humble Bundle Confusion Leads To World Of Warships Anger”
If this happened in AUS, under AUS legal jurisdiction, Wargaming would be held accountable and delivery of the initial promise would be enforced
Disgraceful behaviour
As humble bundle sell to Australia without any region blocking or such they are held accountable to our ACL exactly how Steam was and is.
Murmansk shouldn’t be a powerful cruiser at all anyway. She’s actually the USS Milwaukee, an old 1920s Omaha-class cruiser built by the US and loaned to the soviets during WW2. The Omaha-class was the oldest cruiser class in the US Navy by the outbreak of WW2 and basically obsolete.
Super cool story bro, needs more dragons and shit.
A cursory check on ship rankings in World of Warships says the Omaha class is better rated than the Murmansk anyway. I assume the reason it’s popular is because it has the highest armour-piercing DPS of any tier 5 ship. They also class them both as CA (armoured cruiser/heavy cruiser) and not the light cruisers they are in reality.
Or alternatively, TLDR, these World of X wargames have never been particularly historically accurate =)
I remember having a cursory glance and noticing that the tech tree for the Japanese destroyers was all kinds of screwed up too. Fubuki-class ranked higher than the Kagerou for example, or the fact that the more advanced models like Asashio and Yuugumo aren’t even in the game and that the prototype Shimakaze is top tier instead of the actually useful Akizuki class. :\
And yeah, the Omaha-class are definitely not anything but Light Cruisers. But WoWS doesn’t make the distinction between CL and CA, despite there being a world of difference between them. At least there’s a progression in the tiers from light to heavy though. Not entirely sure what’s up with the Japanese tree there either – they suddenly veer into a cruiser class that was never launched (Ibuki was converted to a carrier) and then one that only existed on paper, skipping right over the extremely capable Takao.
I guess in the end it’s a game.
This may be true, but is she a cute girl?
Possibly, until they loaned her to Russia. Came back so filthy and infested with rats and cockroaches they had to fumigate her before they were able to break her up for scrap.
Developers have lied, move on and play a different game, let this one crumble and burn – plenty of other games that honest devs have built that are more worth your time