October 5, 2007
And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger...
(Ezekiel 25:17 ...and, of course, Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction)
Numerous reports have surfaced on the web over the last few days regarding legal threats made against blog sites by Left Behind Games, publishers of a controversial real-time strategy title based upon the mega-selling Christian book series.
Gameology writes:
You've probably seen that we've posted some rather critical remarks on the game Left Behind: Eternal Forces... we're apparently on [CEO] Troy Lyndon's radar... On Monday, they escalated their response by sending me a nastygram threatening me with legal action unless I remove "false and misleading" comments from this website.
...The goal of this letter is apparently to intimidate me... On free-speech grounds, then, I feel obligated to stand by my comments and not be intimidated by a frivolous threat intended to chill legitimate criticism.
The better-able-to-defend-itself Daily Kos apparently received a letter as well. At the Public Theologian, Tim Simpson writes:
I got a letter today from... [an] attorney representing Left Behind Games warning me that if I did not remove all of the false and misleading information about their product that I would face legal action.
The Left Behind folks, still reeling from their disastrous launch last year, are gearing up for the release of their expansion pack next month... As an offensive strategy, they are trying to intimidate the Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders in the blogosphere who led the charge against this awful game...
...Christians should not sit silently while corporate money-grubbers make a buck out of perverting the Christian faith. Nor should we sit silently when a game is marketed to children promoting religious violence while American soldiers are dying overseas in the middle of a religious and ethnic civil war.
GP: Suing the blogosphere? Good luck. Such bully tactics are likely to bring the wrath of bloggers - and their readers - down up Left Behind Games.
Come to think if it, Left Behind has a history of watching the blogs. We've had a few comments placed here on GP by a company employee. I wonder if The Daily Show and Jack Thompson got nastygrams as well?
Comments
It more along the lines of a court system, and capital punishment. He is portraying god as the one who kills, and he is basing it off of what the bible says. But the bible says God sees and knows all, even the deepest secrets we hide. But god being the one who knew every aspect of every facet of every situation, and the thoughts of all those in mind, i find him to be very capable, to serve as judge jury and executioner. This based on bible statements, the same bible that Pandralisk is using to accuse god of evil. Kind of scary to think that people can be held accountable for things they think no one knows.
@ Pandralisk, if you want to seriously debate with me, my e-mail is rdeegvainl@yahoo.com. I say this so that I don't have to keep putting this on game politics.
If they hadn't started these threats, everybody would have completely forgotten about the game by now. So it is timely with the expansion pack coming out.
dont waste your money i played the demo seriously go out and get command and conquer 3 (if you havent allready)
that is a great question, and the answer is that without God cerating the universe, there would be nothing before the universe, and that includes no laws, no color, no time, no matter, and no energy. And the very fact that everything in the universe has these things in such precise constistancy, proves that a chaotic creation did not occur, but rather, a perfectly planned and perfectly designed universe did occur. And the requirements for a plan and a design are a planner and a designer.
And the requirements for a perfectly designed universe is God :)
with much love,
Cliff Haris
with much love,
Cliff Harris
Look at things like WarCraft etc, there's massive groups both for and against Warcraft. Blizzard does the smart thing, they simply play out the averages, you can't please everyone all the time, normally, if you can weather the original opinion-storm, you will get a clearer idea of the saleability of your game.
Unfortunately, thanks to the actions of certain individuals, companies seem to be getting the idea that 'controversy = sales', it's worked so well for other companies, I certainly hope that is not what is going on here.
Wow, all I can say is brilliant. While I may be an atheist, I have studied theology and the Bible and I'm pretty sure I could find various things to quote this hypocrasy, but it's too early for that sort of thing.
I didn't know there was an expansion pack, did you?
Exactly...
we all know where the law suit will end
This smells like a corporation attempting to deny individuals their First Amendment rights. IF the government can't do it, there's no way I'm gonna let Ben & Jerry’s or McDonalds have that power.
Wait. Left Behind Games actually has enough money to hire lawyers? I thought they were losing money on their crappy game(s), if anything. I think this may be the real news story.
Shhh. He may hear you.
Before he posts let's go ahead and establish the belief that this is a CORPORATION which is taking such reprehensible actions. No matter what beliefs the CORPORATION may support, they are still a COMPANY and act and should be treated in such a way.
(Now, I wish I could capitalize the word corporation in my previous post. My kingdom for an edit button!)
The game is full of fail.
Yep...
Diner: Excuse me, waiter? What would you reccomend from this menu of comments on a christian related blog post?
Waiter: Ah, may I recommend the genralising, hateful bile, JT style, made by our head chef Pandralisk?
And Pandralisk, shut the fuck up. Before you even start talking. Because with all your snobbery about religion, you appear to be a worse person for it.
[i]The letter does not specify which information posted by the blogger or by his readers is deemed by Troy Lyndon and Left Behind Games, Inc., to be "false and misleading."
Nor does the letter specify that the office address used on Mr. Katz’s letterhead is located in a private house. But an online search on the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Recorder of Deeds site shows that the address -- 452 Brookhurst Ave. – is a private house owned by Linda Ashley. And records on file with the SEC show that Mr. Katz is Ms. Ashley’s son.
The threatening letter from Left Behind Games, Inc., issues from an attorney whose office is located in his mother’s house. The letter instructs bloggers to "contact my Administrator on this matter, Robilyn Lyndon at (951) 816-0901." That would be the home number of Robilyn J. Lyndon, a/k/a Mrs. Troy Lyndon, a/k/a the Executive Vice President of Left Behind Games, Inc. The letter is misleading: the attorney is referring bloggers not to his "Administrator," but back to his client.[/i]
I'm forced to agree that there's no such thing as bad publicity when you don't have any to begin with. They have nowhere to go BUT up.
I take comfort in the knowledge of their inevitable failure.
So they decide to release an expansion and try to force good reviews. Great plan there. Wonder if their lawyer got his license from the same place JBT got his. (ie out of a cracker jack box or equivalent)
What gets me at this is sent to a gamers blog, gamer blogs have gamers and gamers tend to look past the deeper "meaning" of a game (the meaning that JT would dredge out) and just play. So it seems doubtful gamers would bash the thing on theological terms... its just likely to be a repeat of weak game.
-P
How was this game marketed to children? It was barely marketed at all.
And now their marketing strategy seems to consists of pissing off web sites that didn't like the game, just so they might mention the product again.
Isn't that how any crummy product gets airtime?
Either that or they're going for the "whaaaa, interweb atheists are persecuting us pooooooor christians... again.... *buy the game*"
This reeks of “we want free publicity” to me. They have to know they can’t shut people up like that and that even if they could, the backlash would catapult the story into the public eye.
This reeks of "let's not become the butt on the internet's jokes again thanks to our expansion pack." Terrible games (and even good ones) get ripped apart all the time on blogs, it's just the nature of them.
I'm of GameClucks thinking, when was this marketing directly to children?
They must be reading the Jack Thompson book on how to be a media success, sue anyone who says anything you don't like.
Dear Mr. Katz,
Congratulations on your sudden worldwide fame, brought courtesy of Google and the many copies of your cease-and-desist letters that have been posted on various blogs online. The meteoric nature of your rise to fame is impressive. Even if I had all you had -- a legal career conducted out of my mother's Cheeto-and-hand-lotion scented basement, a penchant for writing buffoonish and legally frivolous threatening letters, and an association with a producer of mediocre eliminationist twaddle -- I cannot imagine leveraging it into the sort of prominence you have achieved. They used to say that fame was fleeting, but that was before Google -- what pride you must take in knowing that from now on, whenever anyone searches for your name, they will encounter a deluge of references to this episode! I understand that many of the nation's top firms are as we speak attempting to build a practice in the issuance of ineffectual, quasi-literate, and profoundly unconvincing SLAPP threats, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before your phone starts to ring off the hook with offers from headhunters. Or that may be that State Bar investigator again, I'm not sure. That's what voice-mail is for.
Anyway, be proud that you have proved them all wrong -- the women who have laughed themselves into a trachea-scarring coughing fit in the course of rejecting your mawkish advances, the clients who have fired you upon discovering that your mastery of jurisprudence makes Lionel Hutz look like Oliver Wendell Holmes, the law school classmates who still bond over stories of your earnest but spasm-inducing classroom comments. This shows them! You Are Somebody.
Hooray for you!
What are you hoping to gain from that? To prove yourself superior to a guy who's just doing his job (albeit not competently)?
They'd be setting a dangerous precedent if they won.
-Mike Schwinger
"Do you all seriously think Left Behind Games are the only ones threatening blogs who say a word against them? Oh, no, no nonono. ALL Christians, or, should I say, bible-thumping bigots, spam blogs with cease-and-desists, even if the topic isn't even about Christians! And why? Oh, it's all because of their Bronze-age war-god, who EATS BABIES, and TORTURES PUPPIES.
Their God also secretly lives on earth, as a profoundly gay black man with a hot pink afro and baby blue facial hair named Stan. He lives in Downtown New York, is married to a dustbin called Jim-Bob, and plays STRIP POKER WITH THE DEVIL on saturday nights.
It's all proven in the bible. Really."
:D
Now why doesn't Rockstar do this to news outlets that claim they're products have rape and encourage violence against police officers.
Better yet lets have the atheist try to evolve all those that believe in a higher being. During an Apocalypse.
Muslims force people to make people take trips to Mecca.
For the Jews, well it would almost be the same game.
Maybe for the Buddhist we just have them burn everyone that doesnt reach enlightenment.
offended? I wonder why? maybe I should do a find and replace with the left behind description and see if people get offended.
Certainly both the actual game and the game you propose Are offensive. That isn't the point. The point is people are free to express themselves however they like; provided it doesn't physically harm someone else. If Se7enwolf enjoys the game, good for him. His playing it doesn't affect me whatsoever. Even though I find the concept offensive, I might have to get a demo and try it out just to see what the uproar is about. Hell, I enjoyed 'Plan Nine...' because it's a crappy stupid movie. Maybe I could enjoy the 'Left Behind...' on the same principle.
And I'll just re-iterate the gist of my blog post, which is that while we (as bloggers, commenters, citizens, whatever) should rightly protest attempts to chill free speech, it is possible to break the law by saying or writing something false and damaging about someone or something. So while it's important to me to criticize games that have problems, it's more important to me that I be honest, which is why I'm asking for specific cases where they think I've been dishonest. I have to be willing to let them tell me where they think I'm mistaken if I expect them to listen to the problems I have with the game. And, for the record, the problems I have are its representations of minorities and women. Based on what I've played, I can't say truthfully that I think it promotes a "kill or convert" message, at least not as overtly as some have been describing it. Someone probably could make that argument, but it's not what I'm arguing.
Also, Ron Brynaert is correct that as far as we know, Daily Kos has not received a letter. Someone there just diaryed about the phenomenon of other sites getting the letter. Kotaku, for example, got it seven times.
zach
It just blows my mind every time I hear people putting out offensive content when they get a similar offensive content thrown back at them. Things just start spiraling down from there.
there is that old quote from the bible and said in different ways in practically every religion. "do unto others as other do unto you." So what goes around comes around and if ur ready to offend some people be ready to be offend yourself.
And well he might enjoy the game. like how some might enjoy mine.