Initially, they announced that there will not be any Pay To Win aspects in H1Z1 and the only things you could buy with microtransactions would be cosmetic stuff with no influence on the gameplay.
The controversy started to form when the company behind the game would not keep its promises. It really looked like the game will be a massive hit. The game grew rapidly on Twitch and YouTube sparking the career of many streamers such as Dr. The people were happy with the game and for an early access title, it wasn’t half bad. Managing to sell over 1 MILLION copies of the game on Steam in early access, life was good. You would have to craft, build your base, and keep yourself alive while at the same time competing with other human beings wanting the same thing.Ĭombining an online shooter with a PvE was definitely a novelty back then so they were in for a good game. The game had a great idea, a survival game where you are wandering a post-apocalyptic world full of zombies, a deadly virus that infects people, and only your wits to guide you. Paying for an incomplete game hoping they *might* deliver a fully working and polished version one day simply wasn’t a popular and accepted model back then. When H1Z1 was released in early 2015 and adopted the paid early access funding system people were not impressed. Heck, we even get very hyped when a great title gets early access, however, in 2015 things were not exactly as they are today. It’s 2022, and nowadays we’re way cooler with the idea of a paid early access game. SOE and later Daybreak Game Company decided to work with PlayerUnknown to develop what was meant to be a survival game combined with a shooter, which was pretty much unknown by January 2015 when it was released in early access. They used to be a great game studio with titles such as EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, Matrix Online, and many more, but by now they were fading steadily by the wayside. H1Z1, also known as Z1 Battle Royale (amongst many other names) was first developed by SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) with the hope of being their next big thing after their popularity kinda started to fade. The rise and fall of H1Z1 is a story both amusing and tragic at the same time, which shows how you can have a great product, a great game idea in your hands yet execute it so poorly that everyone who believed in your game will eventually leave. The story of H1Z1 is more than just another survival game turned Battle Royale. With well-known titles such as RUST and DayZ, and later on with Sony Online Entertainment’s H1Z1, it has become a massively popular genre to play.