Hello all,
I am unfortunately here asking for help as I've taken massive losses from false statements said about me, my brother/business partner, and my small game development company. The damages on my products alone are very large including emotional and punitive damage requests. The case has been filed by myself without a lawyer at this point but I already have a lawyer ready to take the case. Due to the damages done I do not have the funds to retain a lawyers assistance.
I have been falsely accused of:
- Stealing artwork
- Stealing assets
- Flipping projects with no work put in
- Doxing
- Had products misrepresented with intention to do damage
- Of illegally using another companies name
- Conducting illegal business activities
- Impersonating someone
- Being incompetent and unable to perform my job
I've been impersonated, and my name has been dragged through the mud not only by the individual being sued but by some of the over three hundred thousand of his subscribers who come to my game forum pages and other locations and say things such as this:
- You're wife is a whore
- You're a thief
- You're a fraud
- You're a scammer
- I hope you die in a fiery car crash
- If you show up at gaming convention XXX I will beat you down
- You're shady
- You're company impersonates other company's
- You need to **** off, get off of this system (where we do business)
- You will be made an example of
- I feel sorry for your kids having such an incompetent parent
- and much more.
This is after multiple requests private and public to the individual to inform his subscriber base to stop harassing me.
I recently received a pile of feces in the mail and someone contacted the Jehovah's witnesses website to have them pay me a visit. This is funny to some of these individuals involved. Nobody on this end thought it was funny when attributed to the damage and harassment being performed. Unfortunately this is probably not the end of the problems but only the beginning. It will all be addressed with hard work and effort though. The harassment spans over 50 thousand postings through youtube, our seller sites, twitter, and several other avenues.
The individual being sued uses his youtube channel, twitter channel, and other media outlets in a combined traffic driving effort to profit from subscription and ad revenue. The result of his videos and articles is the direction of traffic directly to the content shown in those videos store pages where havoc and destruction ensues. Within a matter of days hundreds of posts of negativity can be seen annhilating the marketability of the product leaving the developer who may have spent months and years on that particular game. We survived initial onslaughts of these attacks barely and were just about to break through when the false statements obliterated us, decreasing our income to 1/10th normal and destroying 2x and 3x consequetive quartly increases.
A lot of the individuals following the defamer of our case are competitors and upcoming competitors in our market place. These people harass not only ourselves but dozens of others attempting to start their own business with thousands of hours of hard work. Often alternate online accounts are used to anonymously do the damages. If you are one of the individuals who has been harassing me on a regular basis or posting defamatory statements and wondering why there is little to no response anymore it's because I have been busy building case files on all said statements. If you believe being anonymous will prevent you from recieving said justice you will be surpised when the summons shows up, this goes for competitors in foreign markets using alternate accounts as you may be foreign by you will be sued in the US. This is the first case. More are expected to be filed soon.
I have an excellent lawyer very interested in this case but they only take retainer. Very few lawyers take contingency now for defamation lawsuits. For this reason I will also be documenting the process of this lawsuit(not the contents or personal information) and making it publicly viewable after the case is over so that others in similar dire situations can figure out how to defend themselves from online harassers and defamers. This is the main problem with defamation is the people who are destroyed by said harassment and defamation are left without the financial means to seek damages and this leaves the doer's believing what they are doing is ok(or motivating them to ensure total destruction to avoid retribution as in this case). By donating you are helping indie developer's show that we are people and we will not stand for being harassed and lied about.
Any help you can give is appreciated, it all adds up.
Lawsuit Funding Donation Request
After reading the onslaught of feedback I wanted to write a quick explanation here of the context of the current lawsuit. I have seen countless posts stating this lawsuit is in relation to opinion and criticism when in fact it has nothing to do with it. This is not about someone not liking our games this is about someone printing defamatory and false information to you the public and convincing you something is true when it is not and causing massive damage to us in the wake. This is not about you as a normal individual hopping onto the internet and posting an opinion that may upset someone. This is about holding media figures and news outlets to a sense of duty to print factual information not just something to collect views and hits from.
Think of it like this, when you log on to the internet and say whatever comes to mind about someone else it's like walking down the street and you may accidently or purposely walk into someone. Most of the time it's just shrugged off with a hey watch where you are going. Now when you are a media figure printing articles with information you say is fact with 300,000 followers you are no longer just a person walking down the street you are a semi and can cause extreme damage to those you run into. Defamation has become even more relevant with the boom of the internet not just in the context of amount of articles but the way in which those articles are distributed. When a newspaper printed an article that held defamatory material it was distributed and that was it since that days paper had a limited quantity to distribute. Articles and videos of todays news are in fact a neverending printing press exposing the same defamatory statements over and over to new individuals every single day.
If you stop and think about what I have said here you will realize this is to protect you as well, you could be the next person an irresponsible semi driver plows into on the internet highway.
Below is a request from my brother James for support for the lawsuit he has filed. I would like to add the following: The individual being sued has never apologized, full retracted false statements, informed his audience not to harass us after we requested, or showed any remorse for damages caused and instead collected information in an attempt to have a countersuit or lawsuit to file to cause further damage. This says alot about the individual we have had to deal with for over a year and hopefully will encourage supporters to help with this funding request. We have watched the destruction of a massive amount of indie developers over the past 18 months and realized someone needs to make a stand. Thank you for your support and patronage as we make a stand for developer and individuals rights.
Due to harassers donating amounts specifically to cause charges rather than donations and charge backs to cause financial fees we will be seeking another avenue for donations. Thank you while we sort this out.
Due to harassers donating amounts specifically to cause charges rather than donations and charge backs to cause financial fees we will be seeking another avenue for donations. Thank you while we sort this out.