I don’t know him well enough to call him a friend, but Scott Jennings and I certainly share a similar enough outlook on many parts of life for me to consider him a friend-in-waiting. His blog, of course, is at www.brokentoys.org.

Scott’s got a problem currently. He lives in America, and has been operating under the understandable assumption that freedom of speech lives on, for the most part. Sadly, not everyone feels that way.

A few weeks ago, Scott wrote a post about the legal wranglings over the corpse of IGE. He referenced some court documents about a lawsuit against former CEO of IGE, Brock Pierce. The details of the document are not really important (though there is mention of the Spanish equivalent of the FBI raiding Brock’s house in Spain and shooting his dog, which is dramatic, at least).

What is important (well, to me at least) is that Scott is being threatened by Brock’s lawyer, who has demanded that Scott remove the documents with an “or else” as the unspoken implication. Now, I’ve had dinner and/or drinks with Brock on more than one occasion, and while I realize it’s fashionable to diss him in hardcore gamer circles for the facilitation of RMT that IGE participated in, I happen like him personally. He’s a genial, smart guy and I think he’s got an immense amount of foresight in terms of where the market is going. I’m even willing to give him the benefit of the doubt (that no doubt makes me naive to some of you) and assume that this is the result of an overzealous, overparanoid lawyer.

It makes little difference though. It’s nonsense and shouldn’t be stood for. The post that Scott is being asked to remove can be found here, at a blog that appears to have been created specifically to host that post (no, it’s not me). It can also be found in its entirety below, as I haven’t seen any court order sealing the documents and have every reason to believe the lawyer threatening Scott is bluffing. I don’t believe Scott is legally obligated to remove his post, and I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with me reposting it.

It’d be nice to see other gamer bloggers in our little MMO circle commenting on/reposting this piece of legitimate news (which, incidentally, happens to provide a high level of protection against lawsuits, as I understand it). It’s not likely to do them any good to ask me to remove it, as my blog is regularly scraped by at least a couple websites that are essentially anonymously hosted, and so whatever I post here will be replicated. I’m sure that’s not uncommon, and I’d expect Scott has more blogs scraping his posts than I do.

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This little bit is what I was able to save. The lawyers managed to get everyone else to take it down. Can’t stop the signal Mal.

For almost 5 years, Debonneville has dedicated his entire life to the creation, development, and success of IGE US, LLC (”IGE”). IGE’s meteoric rise from an under funded startup to the market leader culminated in a Goldman-Sachs investment of $60,000,000, which set the value of IGE at the time of $220,000,000. While Pierce, a flamboyant former child actor, has always been the public face of IGE, Debonneville has been the tireless working founder, responsible for the expansion and operation of the company.

There is more….

After living and working in Spain for a few months, Debonneville observed that Rector and Pierce had a very close relationship, one that did not seem normal between a 40-year old man and a 20-year old young man…

…Apparently, there were a multitude of charges related to the prior operation of a company specifying that Pierce, Rector, and Shackley had stolen money from the company and wasted corporate assets for things like the purchase of illicit drugs, living a lavish lifestyle, and criminal allegations of transporting a minor across state lines for sexual purposes. Upon learning this information, Debonneville questioned Pierce regarding the allegations, and Pierce stated that the claims were false and contrived as a setup by some competitors and former employees…

Oh but it gets so much better…

Debonneville was told by Pierce that the “Spanish FBI” came to their house with a “SWAT” team in helicopters, kicked in their door, shot their dog, and threw all of them in jail.

But wait! There’s even more!

Debonneville was starting to discover that Pierce had not only lied to Debonneville about the Yantis Stock Repurchase, but also that Pierce had benefited personally to the detriment of Debonneville from the Salyer and Maslow sale of stock. Of course, Debonneville was shocked to learn that Pierce had sold any of Pierce’s stock in IGE…

On July 14, 2006, in an apparent attempt to convince Debonneville that his interest in IGE was becoming worth less and less money, Debonneville was sent an article regarding a crackdown on the sale and purchase of game items for cash in Korea. The implication was that IGE’s recent acquisition of Itemmania, a Korean online house, was going to be a failure. In hindsight, it appears that this was just another one of Pierce’s attempts to manipulate Debonneville into selling his stock to Pierce for a less than fair value, certainly for less than Pierce realized on the sale to Maverick. Today, it is likely that this may in fact be IGE’s most valuable remaining asset…

It never stops. At this point you want to stop the signal.. but you can’t. Sadly we continue!

Yantis also advised Debonneville that if a deal was not reached with IGE, Yantis had already put a network in place to compete with and destroy IGE. Yantis stated that through the hiring of certain individuals who he had a long
time business relationship with, Yantis would sell currency that had been exploited or duped.

Exploiting or duping is a process whereby an outsider hacks the game program into creating currency for the individual or duplicating an item and then selling it over and over which also results the creation of currency. These actions allow for the exploiter/duper to create an endless supply of currency without any real cost to that currenct. This is something Yantis has done in the past and made large profits from. The exploiter/duper would typically receive a commission for any currency sold of about 40% of the sales price. Due to the currency being exploited, Yantis was and would be able to sell currency at a price significantly below market, since the cost of the currency sold was nonexistent. This also allowed for an infinite supply to be created in what could take as little time as a few minutes.

Yantis indicated that this was also how he could turn the trading arm of IGE around and make it profitable, almost instantly. Pierce was aware of Yantis’ intent to use these exploits. In fact, Pierce counted on them as part of the rationale behind why Yantis should be brought back to work for IGE.

I’ll let you know when the lawyers show up. Can’t stop the signal.