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[Soulliard]

Suing over honest criticism is a blow to free speech everywhere. Bruce himself isn't the point here.

[RobF]

Um, it looks like Everiss presented a theory about the failure of a company he used to work for, a theory that people disagreed with, and then he corrected a couple of incorrect dates and deleted a bunch of comments. That certainly won't win him medals for journalistic integrity, but I don't know if I'd characterize that as "disgusting."

What's that about journo stalking?

Well, the Imagine thing was a bit of a silly that kicked it all off although calling his complete revision of history in order to blank an especially dark slate on his CV "a theory" is umm, letting him off light y'know? Especially considering how well documented the demise of Imagine is (ffs, it was filmed for the BBC!) and how it contradicts everything Everiss himself had said before then. It probably means little to US folks, but it's a seminal point in UK games history - a company that so utterly lived beyond its means it makes the story of Ion Storm seem like My Little Pony and one that exploded very publicly on TV. And Everiss was partly responsible for that demise. Not fucking playground pirates.

And when I said "disgusting" I was referring precisely to Everiss' behaviour afterwards. For around 3 months later he obsessively stalked Stu Campbell (and fuck knows why he didn't pick on me, John Walker or anyone else involved in the comments section - we got off light I guess or he just couldn't dig up any shit on us), at one point in a comments section comically asking him out for a fight (granted, this was at least funny). Some of it I touched on in my piece but it went on much longer and much further than that and was really fucking creepy and icky. He's a nutjob.

Suing over honest criticism is a blow to free speech everywhere. Bruce himself isn't the point here.

Actually, he partly is. You know there's a right way to do things and a dodgy way to do things and Bruce has a way of stating his bizarre opinions as fact. He doesn't research, he doesn't care, it's blog hits and controversy all the way. It really was only a matter of time before someone came along and attempted to drag him through the courts. Yes, Evony are shits but you can't divorce that from Bruce's blog hit seeking ways. He'd shit on your gran if it meant he'd get 10 more visits to his blog. And it's that hit seeking that got TCE named in the legal letter and it's only the fact that he's now banned from innumerable places on the internet that stopped his stuff getting spread further and more people ending up with threatening letters on their desks.

It's all very well taking up the sword of righteous justice against Evony, cock knows they deserve all the flack they get, but you've got to have the context of how this situation emerged and that hinges *entirely* on how Everiss operates.

He's not anywhere nearly as righteous or as innocent as he'd have you believe and that *is* important. I appreciate most of this probably sounds petty or means nothing to most people on here, but if you'd seen first hand the way Bruce operates then you'd not be so quick to leap on this.

[Craig Stern]

It's all very well taking up the sword of righteous justice against Evony, cock knows they deserve all the flack they get, but you've got to have the context of how this situation emerged and that hinges *entirely* on how Everiss operates.

They filed a complaint against The Guardian as well. I think it's taking it a bit far to say this hinges entirely on Everiss's M.O.

[RobF]

And you'll notice The Guardian aren't trying to invoke a shit storm across the internet and running to the batphone to call The-Streisand-Effect-Mobile. It's not like Bruce is a penniless blogger who could never afford a lawyer in a milllion years. You don't do as many years as he has in the positions he's occupied in the industry and come out with 5 pence and a lollipop.

Sorry, I can't feel sorry for the guy or take this up as some sort of affront on free speech. As someone in the public area on TCE said "it's parasite vs parasite" and truthfully, I wouldn't want to side with either side here. One may be vastly less wrong than the other but they're both still wrong.

[Melly]

Maybe Everiss is despicable, but Evony and the company behind it are still something worth fighting against. I'll be doing more research on the matter on the next few days, but I have a strong belief that they must be stopped from their practices.

[RobF]

I concur. Just y'know, in case anyone thought I didn't

You have to pick your fights carefully though and I (in case you hadn't guessed) firmly believe this isn't the right one nor the right way to tackle Evony.

I don't think they'll be around too much longer anyway, at least not in this form.

[Melly]

They're like mutant shapeshifters.

[Zaphos]

I see the Evony ad everywhere now.
Maybe game-oriented websites should boycott.

They can't- Evony (ab)uses AdSense, IIRC, so it's either Evony ads or no ads.

you can block ads from specific hosts with adsense

I think that's actually what the whole lawsuit is about. The guy claimed that Evony was using things like www.evony8.com so that you couldn't block all of them.

It looked like this issue is actually fixed now, according to http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thread?tid=7c9ef267b8b3c01f&hl=en

Anyway, it is a bit confusing that Bruce (never heard of him, btw?) says on the one hand "help me blog readers, you are my only hope!" and then right after says that the Australian lawyer has no case (in his response to the lawyer).  I am guessing the truth is closer to the latter than the former?

Although ... what is the criteria for libel anyway?  At the risk of sounding too empathetic to the Evony people (who are clearly shady and lame), I'd like to paraphrase this post -- http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/16/is-evony-malware/ -- replacing the question "is Evony malware?" with "is your mother a whore?" (edit: er, that exercise was kind of amusing but too unpleasant, so I've removed it ... I'm sure you can replicate the transform on your own if you like.)

[William Broom]

The thing that really struck me about this Bruce character was that his use of the phrase 'Chinese gold farmers' was a pretty blatant appeal to racism.

Though Evony are shits too, of course.

[googoogjoob]

The thing that really struck me about this Bruce character was that his use of the phrase 'Chinese gold farmers' was a pretty blatant appeal to racism.

"China is by far the major location, employing an estimated 80-85% of all gold farmers."

Not necessarily racism, considering the statistics.

[Zaphos]

The thing that really struck me about this Bruce character was that his use of the phrase 'Chinese gold farmers' was a pretty blatant appeal to racism.

"China is by far the major location, employing an estimated 80-85% of all gold farmers."

Not necessarily racism, considering the statistics.

When he says stuff like this though: "Obviously legitimate western games like Runescape and Habbo can be trusted. But what about games from Chinese gold farmers like Evony and Empire Craft?"
... it seems pretty racist.

[googoogjoob]

The thing that really struck me about this Bruce character was that his use of the phrase 'Chinese gold farmers' was a pretty blatant appeal to racism.

"China is by far the major location, employing an estimated 80-85% of all gold farmers."

Not necessarily racism, considering the statistics.

When he says stuff like this though: "Obviously legitimate western games like Runescape and Habbo can be trusted. But what about games from Chinese gold farmers like Evony and Empire Craft?"
... it seems pretty racist.

Oh crap I missed that bit in the mountain of verbiage.

Yeah that is pretty blatant, especially considering the sentence doesn't make any less sense if you remove the words "western" and "Chinese".

[William Broom]

He refers to them consistently as 'Chinese gold farmers' in order to demonize them. It's also kind of irrelevant to say that they're gold farmers, since the issue at hand has nothing to do with gold farming. It's like referring to Nintendo as 'playing card manufacturers'.

[Rynen10K]

Eric Lam is a Chinese businessman who owns or is associated with a whole cloud of companies and websites. He was sued by Microsoft for online advertising click fraud. It is thought that Lam owns the gold farming company Wowmine and that he could be earning as much as half a million dollars a day from this alone.

Although it's nothing concrete, I'm guessing that's why he keeps saying "goldfarmer".

[Craig Stern]

Look, whether Everiss is a jerk or not (the repeated use of "Chinese gold farmer" struck a wrong note with me as well), the fact remains that this kind of attack on the freedom of speech for anybody is an attack on the freedom for everyone. If Everiss can be sued on the other side of the planet for criticizing Evony, so can any of us. Don't make me whip out the Niemöller poem.

[Soulliard]

Sorry, I can't feel sorry for the guy or take this up as some sort of affront on free speech. As someone in the public area on TCE said "it's parasite vs parasite" and truthfully, I wouldn't want to side with either side here. One may be vastly less wrong than the other but they're both still wrong.

So what does that make The Guardian?

Anyways, the reason I'm trying to get the word out is not to help Bruce. Drawing attention to this issue isn't going to help him in court anyway.

But bad publicity will cut into Evony's profits. It will show them how unwise it is to take unjust legal action against any blog or publication that criticizes them in the slightest. And it will dissuade others from repeating Evony's actions.

If Evony is allowed to get away with this, we'll see the same thing happen again.

[PaleFox]

I don't know, Bruce is not always the most reliable source; does anyone recall the whole issue with piracy wherein he erased any comments that criticized him? And herein, while he may be right in some things, he certainly also seems to show a racist bent. That doesn't mean he isn't right about their advertising practices, just... take his words with a grain of salt. On the other hand, I can't see that anything he's actually being sued for is untrue, since mostly he just rants about the head guy being a "Chinese gold farmer" and about them posting lots of ads, both of which I would assume would be easy enough to prove if he has to; the main issue here is the actual cost of litigation, it seems.

EDIT: actually, some of the claims, now that I look at them, may actually stick on him. One claim they are suing over is that Evony is deliberately promoting malware, another is that Evony is created to gain profit via gold-farming. The first may be true, but the second surely is not: Evony is created to make lots of money in exactly the same way Korean MMORPGs make money, which is to sell stuff to people. If the person running it also has a gold farm operation, it does not matter. Assuming they can prove he's claimed this, I think they may have a case, although I can't say for sure what counts as libel in Australia...

[Soulliard]

The Guardian is a reliable source, though.

[Anthony Flack]

Do listen to Rob. Evony may well be run by a reprehensible bunch of shits (and those awful ads certainly aren't winning them any friends) but you do NOT want to cite Bruce as a reliable source for ANYTHING. It would be like building a court case with the Time Cube guy as your star witness.

[Afinostux]

It would be like building a court case with the Time Cube guy as your star witness.

I'm speechless. That guy kicks ASS.