Bruce Everiss has received two threatening letters from a NSW law firm representing the Chinese game company Evony. Here is the latest where they whinge about his publication of their first letter [1] (NB if threaten to sue a blogger you have to expect your letter to be published, it’s not discourteous it’s just the way things work). Here is the first letter from the law firm [2] – Bruce has illustrated the post with one of the advertising pictures that Evony uses (apparently ripped from a lingerie catalog).
I’ve seen some of the Evony adverts on my blog, the ones with a provocatively dressed woman (lingerie advert?) and the title “Come Play, my Lord“.
Ken has an amusing and insightful post on the issue [3] – which also makes some amusing jokes about the Australian legal system.
Bruce’s blog has some good insights into the gaming industry and culture, I’ve added his blog to my feed.
It seems that Bruce will gain a lot of readers due to these legal threats, while Evony seems unlikely to gain anything other than bad PR.
Let’s all play the Streisand Effect game!
1. Google the company name and find the top-ranked critical article. In this case it’s “Don’t play Evony” at http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/10/dont-play-evony/
2. Link to it, using the company’s name as link text.
Evony
3. See how high up the Google rankings you can push the critical article.
(I had never even heard of this game before. Maybe I should turn off AdBlock Plus every once in a while.)