Day: March 4, 2010

Upper Deck Loses World of Warcraft TCG License

In February, Blizzard and Upper Deck both issued statements surrounding the World of Warcraft: Trading Card Game which Upper Deck had published since its release in 2006.

Coincidentally, the announcement came shortly after Upper Deck reached a settlement with Konami over the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game. Until December 2008, Upper Deck had been the distributor of that game outside of Asia. But Upper Deck got caught printing hundreds of thousands of counterfeit cards.

Konami pulled no punches in its press release announcing the settlement,

“This entire situation came as a huge shock to us. As a company that has based their entire business model on producing authentic entertainment and sports licensed products, Upper Deck went against their very core beliefs by counterfeiting Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG Cards,” commented KDE’s Vice President of Card Business Yumi Hoashi.  “It was very disheartening to learn that a trusted business partner would take these actions to dupe us and the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG community.”

The litigation began in October 2008, when KDE discovered that counterfeit cards from the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG were being sold in Toys “R” Us stores by a sub-distributor for Upper Deck.  KDE filed suit, and the sub-distributor told KDE that the counterfeit cards were supplied by Upper Deck.

“As a leading company in this card industry, Upper Deck should have known more than well that counterfeit activities would irreparably harm the trust of Duelists and the integrity of the Yu-Gi-Oh! brand,” said KDE’s Hoashi. Upper Deck initially denied those charges and issued press releases announcing that any suggestion that Upper Deck would be involved in counterfeiting activity is “absurd.”

Failing to own up to its actions, Upper Deck sent out a press release on January 29, 2010 stating its satisfaction with the settlement and how the judge ruled against KDE in several areas.  The ruling that United States District Judge Valerie Baker Fairbank made on December 23, 2009 was simple. She ruled that Upper Deck violated trademark, copyright and unfair competition laws by counterfeiting Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG cards.

Blizzard didn’t cite the Konami dispute as its reason for dropping Upper Deck, but certainly any company interested in maintaining its brand would want to think twice (or three or four times) before doing business with Upper Deck after its behavior with the Yu-Gi-Oh! game.

The loss of the license also extends to the World of Warcraft collectible miniatures game.

The Steve Jackson Games Raid 20 Years Later

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the raid by the Secret Service on Steve Jackson Games. The raid was one of a number of actions that spurred the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in July 1990 — an organization Steve Jackson thanks in a brief posting about the anniversary,

But we might not be making games today if it weren’t for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The founders of the EFF took on the very serious business of defending us – all of us – against perhaps the worst menace a democracy can face: its own police, laws, and courts gone astray. The balance between freedom and security never stands still, and new technology changes the details but mustn’t be allowed to change the principles. That’s why the EFF was created, and that’s why it’s still around, 20 years later. And I’m very grateful.

The incident was widely reported as being caused by a misunderstanding of the then-in-development Cyberpunk GURPS supplement. Although the Secret Service did seize electronic copies of the Cyberpunk supplement and agents subsequently suspected it was a how-to guide for hacking, the raid originated based on Secret Service suspicions about a bulletin board system that Loyd Blankenship ran on his own time that, among other things, included copies of the Phrack ezine.

I.e., there was simply no basis in fact at all for the fishing expedition, and Steve Jackson Games subsequently won a legal judgment against the Secret Service in 1993 which included $50,000 in damages and $250,000 in attorneys fees.

Thank goodness they survived and are still turning out awesome games two decades later.

DC Direct 1/6th Scale Poison Ivy

DC Direct’s 1/6th scale action figure line continues with this Poison Ivy scheduled for May 2010. This figure features two different costume options, but, alas, still features the plastic helmet hair approach. This figure looks better than some of the other female figures in this line, but seriously DC?