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Infinium Labs Threatens Gaming News Site
Over the past year or two, Slashdot has run a number of stories about Infinium Labs and their Phantom Game Console (that phrase still makes me smile, every time). I think we've been generous to them, taking their game console talk at more or less face value, despite the vaporous nature of the product. Now they've decided that threats are a better plan for improving their image than producing a real product, and threatened HardOCP over an older news story. Our own Robin Miller has talked to Infinium and written up his impressions of the situation.
What, are they gonna sue Penny Arcade too?
Dude, Whoa
I Hate The Stupid Phantom
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I thought this kind of behavior was reserved for companies that could afford to lose customers or that had an existing customer base. What do they wish to gain? Slander is difficult to pin on someone especially new organizations if you're in the public eye.
Pretty widgets? What pretty widgets?
I'm no legal strategist but wouldn't it be smarter for Infinium to actually demo one of these consoles then go after HardOCP for slander/defamation/whatever? Right now it sounds like they don't like the attacks on their vapourware. My idea assumes, naturally, that Infinium actuall has a Phantom console to demo...
Infinium needs to shit or get off the pot (ala SCO)
Trolling is a art,
Sue a well known gaming website.
/Guinness beer dude
BRILLIANT!
The next step in their buisness plan is perhaps to do a SCO
How about suing another console vendor for $1 Billion for infringing on IP in their vaporware console?
I preemptively named my software company The Vapour Software Company, so that when people read articles about my late products they just think the writer is mentioning the name of my company again and again. The later my producs, the better the free advertising!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This will be the first console that will have a port of Duke Nukem Forever.
While I have to give props to Roblimo for having the courage to have a bit of satirical fun with this, it almost makes me want to cry to realize that things have gotten this absurd.
Has the business world become so totally detached from reality that they honestly believe that they shouldn't be criticised for something as blatantly bullshit as this? What kind of strange alternate reality is this company living in?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
I have extended HardOCP.com's pledge to correct any and all possible inconsistencies or errors in our editorial entitled "Behind the Phantom Console" personally to Timothy Roberts and Kevin Bachus of Infinium Labs and they have yet to inform HardOCP.com of any information we presented as being not correct. This courtesy was extended on September 17, 2003, the date the article was published and has been extended several times since then with no reply ever being received by HardOCP.com. It is my opinion that Infinium Labs' only interest is stifling HardOCP.com and our opinions. HardOCP.com still stands by our thoughts and opinions put forth in our editorial and no amount of legal badgering and frivolous lawsuits will change those opinions that we have shared with our readers.
_____________________________
Kyle Bennett
Editor-in-Chief @ HardOCP.com
Nice to see they have no intention of rolling over.
$1,250,100.
Is it just me, or is anyone else wondering about that $100? I mean, $1.25 million is a nice, round number. Easy to remember and deal with, but that $100 extra is some sort of ugly wart at the end.
What is it? A birdbath? Prettier shingles? What honestly adjusts the price of a house by $100?!
----- ----- -----
Actually, the HardOCP article is more of an attack on the credibility of the founder of the company. While it's nothing but a listing of hard facts, it paints a very bleak picture of Tim Robert's competence as an entrepreneur. Essentially, it charges that many of the companies he worked for were failures, and the only ones which are still operational (or could at least be contacted) had family members working in high places there. The only exception to this is a company that went IPO a couple of years after he left and then sunk to the point of being threatened with delisting. They basically come out and say that the man is a multi-time loser who has wasted millions of investor dollars and whose business doesn't even have a physical office -- just a bunch of press releases.
As a news organization, HardOCP has a lot going for them in a slander/libel case. The only thing I think which they might be liable on is the implication (not a direct statement) that Tim Roberts being at WorldCom was somehow related to the bankruptcy of WorldCom.
As for the trademark violations, IANAL, so I don't know how liable a news organization can be for using a company's name and logo in a report without their permission. I doubt that they're going to be in any serious trouble, so long as they go back and place "tm's" on everything, but trademark law has surprised me many times before.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The console must also double as a server.
-ashot
Slander regards spoken insults, in print it's called libel. That aside, it isn't libel if it's the truth. So long as nothing HardCOP said was fabricated - it's an open and shut deal. Infinium is just wasting even more time and money not making games.
Why the hell does Infinium labs care now, five months later? If they felt wronged by the story, you'd think they'd have at least demanded a retraction back when it broke. So my guess is that this is the only way they can get back in the headlines anymore. They probably had some press release recently that was passed over by the media - so now they're fighting to be remembered.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I call shenanigans on this post, namely because:
1) "Macroscale Design" is n't a degree I've heard of, if anything for designing products you'd have a product design degree.
2) You don't do product design in rendering packages like maya and lightwave, more like Solidworks or if you did n't have the cash Rhino3D.
anyone else find it humorous that the lawyers who wrote the threat letter are at www.mofo.com ?
After all, Bachus is a seasoned pro [...] in an interview with gamesindustry.biz published January 29, 2004, he said, "I plan to be working in this industry, hopefully at Infinium but if not then somewhere else, for a long time, and ultimately all I have is my credibility."
What, no skill, talent, experience, vision, morality or integrity? That damn journalist must have cut those bits out to save on his word count.
(though, to be fair - from a slashdot editor, I would have expected : 'All I have is my credibilty, and my credibility').
But I would take it even further, following Robin's strategy.
Just remove all articles. Inifinium has produced nothing but laughable trash when it comes to PR anyway and I don't think the gaming industry needs any more from blowhard vaporeware merchants. Don't give these guys any soap box, good bad or otherwise, in which to con venture capitol from anyone else. Especially with the clear lack of respect they have for the online community you would think they would want to entice.
Just make them vanish. I mean jeebus, these were the rocket scientists who couldn't get an online email form to work right - who thinks they can produce a secured broadband game delivery console before Sony and MS swallows up the market?
They want the "truth" to come out? Fine. Let them put a product on the shelves. Until them, just blackball them from the web.
Just think if you can fool a few rich people or companies, you too can live in a 3 million dollar home and not have to do any real work!!!!
Scam #1: Start a business in a hot area, get a few componies interested in your idea's. Get investers interested in your company, but telling them how companies are dying to buy your new product. Then sale the company before people realies there is no product and it starts fold.
Scam #2: Tell investers you have a new product idea for a hot market, get them to invest lot's of money. Then pay yourself an outragous salary, until you have used up all the investment. Then say you were a victem of a tough market.
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
I dunno. With a background like that of Tim Roberts and a product named "Phantom", I'm sure I could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps this was the strategy from the start.
/. IANAL's and IAAL's debunk this particular conspiracy theory. :)
1. Produce hype and raise investment for a product that sounds like, looks like and feels like it's going to be vapourware.
2. Wait until the hordes of enthusiast web sites start labelling the product vapourware.
3. Sue the crap out of one of the smaller, juicier targets on the basis that they're having an financial impact on the product's ongoing development.
4. Rinse, repeat steps 1 and 3 until you've raised so much money you can either a) actually build the product or b) do a runner.
5. Well, profit. =P
Maybe I'm just a little jumpy in this SCO-et-al era. I'm not trying to bait but I would genuinely love to hear some
Can anyone decipher that?
...and does anyone else suspect that this whole ordeal might be a front for the REAL BUSINESS?
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
You gave me an idea. 3D Realms(DNF) can claim that Vaporware is their intellectual property and sue Infinium for infringing on that.
I give up. I can't tell the litigious bastards without a scorecard anymore.
Okay, someone clue me in. Which litigious bastards are we supposed to be angry at now?
These litigious bastards ... ...
these other litigious bastards...
now these litigious bastards
or perhaps (and oldie but a goodie) these litigious bastards
Man, that's going to be an awful lot of HREFs to compile in my posts to talk about anybody on Slashdot anymore.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)