Evony is at it again. In their attempts to sue Bruce Everiss at Bruce On Games, they’re scrambling to disguise or delete any and all of the evidence he and the gaming community has collected.
The article he wrote about Evony being Malware caught the attention of Eric Lam, the guy who runs the gold-farming UMGE network of businesses and the guy who was sued by Microsoft for click-fraud schemes decided to sue Bruce Everiss. While the details of the case are expertly described on Mr. Everiss’ site, the new wrinkle in this attempt to silence criticism is that there are efforts to disassociate Evony with UMGE altogether to cover up the evidence.
They’ve edited their Evony wiki to remove references to UMGE and when one of the commenters on Bruce’s site pointed out that they missed a reference, shortly after, that reference was removed as well.
"See who's wanting you?" WTF?
The official UMGE.com site is down (and parked by GoDaddy) as well as 321Wan.com (the company that built the original Civony game, then cloned it to other browser games) is also down as well.
A student and reader of Bruce on Games went into the code of the game and found numerous references to UMGE and found that rather than malware designed to hurt the computer, it’s a massive data-mining engine. Evony’s client, once installed, harvests tons of user information and sends it back to UMGE/ Evony. While this is speculation, this would be a great way to scrape emails for spam, track sites you’re visiting and generally invade your privacy. Now, those references are gone.
It’s become clear that the core argument from Evony/ UMGE/ Eric Lam is primarily that Bruce Everiss (and the internet community at large) made fun of him, his business and his game and he wants litigation to cause them to shut up. His case depends on removing the digital trails and deleting the connections so that the claims Bruce made can no longer be found.
All of this deception continues as Evony continues to throw stupid and misleading ads across the internet. Again, while sex in advertising works, there’s very little in those ads that represent what the product actually is. It’s deceptive, pure and simple.
It’s bad marketing, it’s bad business and when called out, they litigate and try to remove evidence.
When you pay for products and services online, it’s critical that the company deserves a basic level of trust. As more people join and play Evony, they’re giving their money to a company that doesn’t deserve that trust.
Donate to Bruce’s fight against the UMGE/ Eric Lam/ Evony litigation here at PayPal.
Update: Due to heavy traffic from GamePolitics & Kotaku… my site got broken. I apologize for the loss of images and normal theme. It will resume when the traffic subsides, I never expected this much attention.
2009 was a pretty good year for video games. It gave us Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age, Assassin’s Creed 2, Scribblenauts and so many other good games.
On the flip side, we were assaulted with horrible games like NBA Unrivaled, Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust and Dragonball: Evolution.
Some of the video game marketing campaigns left us thinking “what fresh hell is this?” 2009 saw some incredibly stupid, offensive, ineffective and dumb marketing campaigns for video games too. Here are the ones that angried up our blood and became stains on the internet.
Enjoy.
#5: Dead Space Extraction
For a decent game that followed up a fairly successful attempt at an original IP from EA, Dead Space Extraction really pushed what the graphics could do on the simpering Wii. The story didn’t suck, the characters were interesting and there was a surprising reaction to Lexine Murdoch (which is a pretty dumb name) as a compelling character in which people actually cared about her final fate.
Where they went wrong with this was the marketing of the game. It was really nowhere to be found. For a decent prequel to a decent game, the marketing was haphazard. It really felt like EA didn’t know how to market this game. It’s a survival horror – rail shooter game for the Wii. Prominently featured is Lexine, but her game time wasn’t really representative of the top billing on the cover art.
Overall, Dead Space: Extraction’s marketing felt shoddy, incoherent and plug and play. Sad, because it’s a decent game. I felt like EA’s marketing for this game basically said, “Hey gamers, here’s Dead Space, remember you kinda liked the other game? Well, this one’s a prequel, and it’s for the Wii. We think you’ll really enjoy it, or not. Either way, it’s here and you can buy it if you want…”
#4: Modern Warfare 2: Infinity Ward
There’s no doubt that Infinity Ward spent a shitload of money on this marketing campaign. They integrated an excellent social marketing campaign through Twitter, their display at E3 was phenomenal and everything gelled at the right time, had the right message and at all times, reinforced gamers’ resolve to buy this game, twice.
Until F.A.G.S.
Or, “Fight Against Grenade Spam”. Where you see the “Blunt Trauma” perk (get it? get it? It’s a pot joke! OMGLOL) Where Cole Hamels gives this incredibly stupid PSA message about grenade spam.
Ultimately, the video was taken down by Robert Bowling who then issued the standard non-apology apology on Twitter where he said:
I agree. I think the core gag is great, the end is a bit too far from the intent of the joke & can appreciate the concerns. Pulled.
I can see his point and I give Robert Bowling a tremendous amount of credit for his work, effort and excellence in the marketing of MW2, but this video… at the very end of the campaign… just felt like a bitter pill to swallow. This isn’t good marketing, this is a douchebag chestbump to the Xbox Live cacophony.
#3: Rogue Warrior
Gamespot gave Rogue Warrior a review of 2.0, one of the lowest its ever given to a AAA game. From Bethesda no less. This is the studio that’s given us Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and the entire Elder Scrolls series. Then they roll in Richard (Dick) Marcinko to make this game that’s not worth the plastic its printed on. The entire game feels like someone at Bethesda thought they’d take someone who was marginally cool among militia types and then make a shit-eating game that could actually inspire real violence… that is, if anyone bought the damn game.
Where the marketing went wrong was that it was promoted as a kick-ass, stealth, combat ops game, comparable to Ghost Recon or Rainbow 6 type games. Not even close. Any marketer worth a hill of beans knows that marketing is about delivering expectations and making sure your product can actually fulfill that. In this case… not so much. Bethesda Softworks should have known better.
However, I do like their new marketing campaign.
The Rogue Tour
Also known as Call of Duty: The Quest for More Money
It’s about as believable as Palin 2012
#2: Dante’s Inferno
Dante’s Inferno manufactured controversy wherever it went. From throngs of faux-Christian outrage to the infamous “Sin to Win/ Grope a Booth Babe” contest. Dante’s Inferno effectively got its word out to gamers and pissed them off.
They pissed off the religious, they pissed off women and then, they sent $300 checks to the gaming media to “tempt” them to cash the check in some damned if you do, damned if you don’t marketing campaign.
Most of the video game media told EA’s Dante’s Peak to piss off.
While I understand the controversy as marketing ploy, in this case, Dante’s Inferno & EA seemed to try to piss off anyone who came even close to caring about their game, a game by all accounts, should be pretty kick-ass.
#1: Evony
Oh Evony, how I hate you. You cluttered up the internet with your stupidly ripped off images, you sued people who reported on your gold-spamming and malware, you spammed blogs with comments, you ripped off image assets from other games, you and your sniveling CEO complained about people shining the light on your deceptive practices and lastly…
YOUR GOD-DAMNED GAME SUCKED
Screw You Evony
Buy Rogue Warrior – Go Rogue!
It was the worst Civ clone ever. You stole a shitty game, crapped it out onto a browser, enticed people to play it, charged them for talking, deleted comments and never… ever… gave a penny back.
Now available on ModDB, the Din0 D-Day has just been released by Digital Ranch Interactive. This looks absolutely amazing
I’ve sat here for the past 5 minutes, trying to think of something insightful, though-provoking and creative, but the only thing that’s running through my head is this spectacular trailer. My mind’s blown!
Ultimately, in the new social economy, in the new ways that technology can connect people and ideas, this is the kind of creative collaboration that happens when game companies support their loyal fan base.
While there’s a part of me that wants to write a dissertation on marketing, communication and the leveraging of tools and the social web to make a larger point about marketing, all I really want to do is watch this amazing trailer again.
Marketing isn’t just about pushing products or services, there’s an absolutely critical relationship between the company, the product and the user base.
This is just amazing… I’m gonna have to fire up my computer and play the hell out of this.
Remember an older Friday Fhtagn, where I nearly fell over myself saying how amazingly awesome James Riot’s Arthurian/ Lovecraftian comic “The Path” was?
In case you haven’t read that article, I’ve just linked to it above and here are the links for you to go… go now and read them.
Well, I’ve been catching up on some of my webcomics lately, and reading some of the news from the Long Beach Comic Con where I fell upon this: The Mediocre Militia. It’s a place where some more excellent webcomics are linked to, and there’s a blog too. That’s where I found this:
So, what’s in store for The Path? I whole freaking LOT.
“Strange Tales of The Path” collected edition, compiling “The Path” stories done by other creators! Featuring a story by MM’s own Barry Linck!
Mobile-only downloadable stories are coming for your smart-phone/iPhone/Blackberry/whatever. I’m working on the 1st one as I type.
The Path: The Video Game is in development, coming 2010! Seriously. With the ability to be ported to web, iPhone/iPod, and XBox 360!
Contactually-obligated updates! The Path won’t ever have a hiatus ever again! God help us all…
In development is a video game for The Path. This webcomic has become my favorite story based webcomic. I cannot say enough good things about this webcomic.
Can I hope and dream that it will really come to fruition in 2010? I don’t want to get all fanboy about this, but a video game about The Path could be immensely cool (for iPhone/ Xbox 360/ Web!). If the author, artist and creator of The Path puts his talents for story, character and stylized action to a game, I think I can honestly say that’s a game that I’d be only too happy to purchase.
Suddenly 2010 seems too far away.
I’ll keep an eye on this game as it develops and if anyone who’s working on this project wants to talk to me about it, I’d be thrilled to.
