Dear readers! Dear players!
Today, we as representatives of elitepvpers, want to express our view on the latest incidents and the statement Frogster published. We direct this open letter to every concerned reader and to the persons in charge of Frogster. Every episode of this whole case has been summarized in detail by Asdrubael Nith in his Podcast (it's German only, we're sorry but it's a 50 minutes podcast and it would take quite a while to translate), but anyway we want to provide the most important information in writing to everyone interested and we want to show the community our attitude towards all of this. I, as the author, will try to depict the information as factual as possible.
Contrary to the proposition Frogster gave, they didn't contact elitepvpers in March. elitepvpers was admonished (I hope that's the legal term) not until June 2010 which was a very surprising step for us. Frogster saw that as an "attempt to make an agreement out of court", which is an extreme understatement in our opinion. After many years of peacefully coexisting, this attack on a judicial level came pretty sudden. It's easy to explain why this was so unforeseen for us. Our e-mail history gives evidence that the current CEO of Frogster, Andreas Weidenhaupt who will soon resign from that position, wanted to buy elitepvpers. Of course this would be a secret act and his own community "Onlinewelten" would never know any of this. An integration of elitepvpers in Onlinewelten was excluded explicitly for this reason. In the end the purchase failed for reasons of negotiation. Nonetheless Mr.Weidenhaupt planned to be involved in advertising campaigns on elitepvpers.
Obviously Frogster was strongly interested in cooperating with us which we generally appreciate. Even after we received notice of the lawsuit Frogster's interest in working together with us didn't decrease. Still they wanted to promote their games at elitepvpers. In this case it was the game "Mythos" (not yet released). Responding to our question why they still wanted to cooperate with elitepvpers, which they obviously see as counterproductive, they gave us our slogan for this episode: "Freedom of Speech".
Asdrubael Nith's podcast provides detailed information about this and much more. We hope we can translate it soon. However, provided with this knowledge one might understand why we want to defend ourselves in public. We reveal that Gameforge, Frogster's parent company, founded its own goldseller-shop a few years ago where many virtual items for all kinds of MMOs were sold. Towards investors Frogster clearly stated that goldselling has no influence worth to mention on their business and in the lawsuit Frogster is talking about massive damage caused by goldselling. After all these incidents we feel the responsibility to inform our community and every person concerned about it as far as we can.
In the statement of Frogster they also saw the reduction of our Runes of Magic section as an acknowledgement of our guilt. We strongly deny that. This act was a mere preventive measure in case the court agrees with Frogster. We are not forced to close down any part of our forum so far.
This whole public campaign concerning the lawsuit emerged only because we were very shocked about the formulation of the complaint and the incomprehensible course of the process so far. For us it is just intangible, that Frogster can even consider sueing us after such a history and the current circumstances. The concept of elitepvpers, if at all, changed only fractionally ever since the launch of the site.
Last but not least we can only repeat what we stated earlier and we distance ourselves strongly from any illegal activities. It is our intention to provide a platform to a, for the gamingworld, significant group of players. We cannot tolerate that someone tries to impute us to bad intentions. Our top priority is to offer people with special talents a place where they can exchange their experience.
Best regards,
epvp-Administration
Press:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...omise-frogster