Lawyers representing gold farmers threaten Lum the Mad

by Michael Zenke Feb 15th 2008 at 10:30AM

Filed under: Business models, Culture, Economy, MMO industry, New titles, Opinion, Legal

Late last month Scott "Lum the Mad" Jennings put up a post on his well-known MMOG blog site about an ongoing legal battle. It involves former IGE (yeah, the gold farmers) CEO Brock Pierce and co-founder of the company Alan Debonneville. Lum's excellent post, which quotes heavily from the lawsuit documents unearthed by the site Virtually Blind, does little more than sum up the case in one location. Not only have we been following the case along with the VB site, but numerous others have as well.

And yet, in a post on the Broken Toys site today, Lum notes that somehow he's the one that has received legal threats from Brock Pierce's legal team. They've basically asked him to take down the post by the close of business today (February 15th). Mr. Jennings, being a practical person and with no interest in going toe-to-toe with lawyers, is planning to do just that. He does get off a nice shot back at them in his response, saying "I welcome your client's renewed dedication to legal documentation and remind him that there are several outstanding end user licensing agreements attached to games I have assisted in operating in the past, regarding the explicitly forbidden trade of virtual items and characters in said games that he and his company have performed and expedited, that would benefit from his and his company's attention."

Of course, their harshly worded note has prompted responses from other MMOGbloggers, such as these posts from Ryan Shwayder and Matt Mihaly. Perhaps Pierce's team should have considered the impact before they asked Lum to take down his post about the lawsuit. This one, over here on his site. His post concerning Brock Pierce and Alan Debonneville. This post right here.

Tags: alan-debonneville, breaking, brock-pierce, farmers, gold-farming, hernandez-vs-ige, ige, lawyers, legal-threats, lum-the-mad, rmt, scott-jennings, stonewalling

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

aimhigh seelowe said on 11:21AM 2-15-2008

Any games people can BOYCOTT in a show of support? If anything...to make the attorneys regret sending that ILLEGAL and UNWARRANTED (literally) demand?