Pierce To Yantis To Evers To Chance: The Rise And Fall Of IGE

Posted on January 30, 2008 by Scott Jennings| 51 Comments

Thanks to a very nice request detailed here, the contents of this post have been replaced by a very nice picture of a kitten.

kitteh.jpg

You might be able to find the original post that used to be here somewhere on the Internet, I hear that sort of thing happens often.

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  • Anti-Bunny

    Shooting the dog is standard SWAT procedure. This is not a joke.

  • Paks

    You know I’m an avid pet lover and I mean my pets are my children, but I actually burst out laughing when I read the part about the Spain FBI. Does that make me evil and bound for a hell full of farmers and goldsellers spamming me constantly as punishment? …

    The part about Pierce trying to buy diplomatic immunity for his lover was hilarious also!

    I can’t wait to read the sequel… I mean I can’t wait to read Pierce’s counter suit. :)

  • kalain

    I thought there was a writer’s strike. This is obviously a soap opera script.

  • http://www.4rca.com Breed

    Why do you think Law & Order has been on so long. Change names and places, and you can have a made for TV drama.

    Your giving writers too much credit. They could never dream up something like this.

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    That made me wish Jerry Orbach was still alive just to see how Det. Lenny Briscoe would react to a L&O version of this. Maybe they’ll bump it to Criminal Intent and we can see Bobby Goren out himself as a Gunbound junkie.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    And yet RMT is more profitable than ever… Oh and Yantis is obviously still massively wealthy despite all of this drama. He’s got to be worth 8 figures now.

    Who has profited more from their EQ experience on an individual level than Jonathan Yantis? He’s even smoked Smed and Brad in the pure cash value department. If Yantis had a biography I’d read it, study it, learn from it, become the better man for it.

    Hate him all you want but damn he’s become successful in online gaming. And remember, it’s just a game.

  • Paks

    Well “become the better man for it” might be stretching it a tad. :)

    And once players started making a living from selling virtual items they acquired in MMOs, and finding love, competing for prizes, developing guilds that they consider extended families… (the list goes on and on), then MMOs became more then a game. MMOs have become a community of sorts that affect every day lives.

  • Aufero

    Yantis is successful in online gaming like Capone was successful in prohibition, and for much the same reasons.

  • IanB

    What, you couldn’t think of something pithy to replace “ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble” with? ;)

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    Aufero,
    As far as I can tell there is no counter part of Eliot Ness to your Capone imagery. AS far as can be shown so far Yantis has broken no laws.
    Like him or not, Yantis was a real pioneer in online gaming and his story is an important one.

  • Paks

    Let’s not forget that being a pioneer isn’t always a good thing. It just means you were one of the first to forage into uncharted territory, and says nothing about one’s character or exploits while doing so.

    Idolize him if you will (and as certainly is your right), but what he brings to the gaming world was/is sorely not needed. Just the fact that his business was pretty much built off of duping and exploiting presents enough information for me to realize that.

  • Count Nerfedalot

    “… Yantis has broken no laws.”

    er, no.

    I’m pretty sure willfully entering into a contract which you fully intend to break is against the law. Even if said contract eventually proves to be wholly or partly unenforceable. It’s the intent to defraud that is illegal in that case. And if it’s hard to *prove* that his first user account in a given game was acquired with intent to defraud, it wouldn’t be to hard to show that any subsequent accounts (used specifically for farming, for example) most certainly were bought with the specific intent of violating the by-that-time known-and-consented-to EULA contract. You can’t claim ignorance or innocent victim status the second, third, fourth, etc time around!

    Oh, and I am not a lawyer, and this is solely my personal opinion and should not be interpreted as any form of legal advice or opinion.

  • http://emergentfuture.com Arrakiv

    Sounds cool, when does this air?

    … Oh. It’s real.

    Anyway, this is definitely interesting. It seems like I have heard bits and pieces of this over time, but then again, it might just be that crime dramas are to popular.

    The problem with RMT, however, is that there is virtually nothing that can be done to stop it, shy of removing the player’s ability to trade with others – and even then you can still find a work around. So long as there is a profit to be made, someone is going to be there trying to make it regardless of how they’re going about doing it.

  • Boanerges

    A clearer explanation of the toxic effects of RMT on online gaming has yet to be written.

    I don’t think I can ever forget this post where a former plat seller pretty much talked about the early EQ market (back when Yantis was still a bit player) and how he got run out of business by dupers. The really interesting part is where he talks about the EQ Firiona Vie server, where you can trade all gear that is no-trade on other servers. It’s a fascinating microcosm in the RMT world.

  • http://mythicalblog.com Jeff Freeman

    I can’t follow all that. Would you mind terribly doing a dramatic re-enactment of the allegations using action figures and posting it to YouTube?

    PLEASE?

    Except leave out the part where they shoot the dog. They Always Shoot the Dog. At least change it to a killer robot or something.

  • ubvman

    This is why the old school grind MMOGs like EQ1 and Vanguard are dead and buried (good riddance). Grind fest is so 1999. As to the bleatings of Yantis breaking the EULA, well don’t be surprised when you drop enough chum in the water, sharks show up.

    You know, in the end its ALWAYS THE IRS that gets these guys. Its the same with Al Capone, they never pay any taxes (how do you explain earnings from “duping”?). Or if they do, its almost a certainty they or their accountants will fudge it up and lose all their money to the IRS.

  • http://www.mmogchart.com SirBruce

    Anyway who talked to those guys in person could tell they were shady. I didn’t fault Brock for his past; what did or didn’t happen is impossible to know, and a lot of child actors get screwd up. But from a business perspective you knew these people weren’t to be trusted. One of them must have had an inside promoter in Goldman Sachs who managed to push the deal through.

    Debonneville may or may not be a stand up guy, but the way I read the paperwork it seems like he doesn’t think he got his fair share of the tens of millions IGE snookered people into giving them, and he’s probably right.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    I don’t idolize Yantis. I believe his story is an important one in gaming history. There’s a lot to be learned from his story.

  • http://antipwn.wordpress.com/ IainC

    This is one of those cases where you wish they could both lose. D-One has it right though, these people have taught games designers some important lesson. Simply opposing them is no longer sufficient, if you want them gone you have to get inside their skins and design them out.

    Regarding the toxic effects of RMT, I read your older post that you linked to, it pretty much summed up the reasons why I hate it also. I wrote this some time ago in response to the SOE white paper and I haven’t yet seen any data that has caused me to change my views.

  • http://www.corpnews.com Andrew Crystall

    Lum, it says a lot more about third party companies and games from my perspective. RMT itself won’t go away if you shuttered IGER and Yantis, and Eve Online shows how personal RMT is far less of an overall issue… (in a game where in-game cash *is* critical above the low-end!)

  • http://wowpanda.blogspot.com/ wowpanda

    I agree with Andrew. RMT is simply supply and demand. You need to lead it instead of fight it. Design it out is even better :-)

  • Merkwurdigliebe

    I suppose you could make a game where there was no money… or anything transferable between characters.

  • Ed

    After reading the whole doc, I gotta say, if even half of it is true Pierce is one of the biggest dirtbags around teh Intarwebs. My way of fixing the RMT problem is a controversial one. :) IMO the majority of people who buy “gold” or items will do so whether or not it’s prohibited by the TOS. MMO companies can kill the farmers and sellers dead by just selling the stuff themselves. As a player and game professional it wouldn’t bother me at all.

  • http://www.zenofdesign.com Damion S

    I realize this won’t be a popular opinion but… this whole thing reads a lot more about one incompetently run business than any inherent flaw in RMT as a whole.

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  • Simond

    [b]ubvman[/b], that link’s a little more direct than you think – Alann Debonneville was known as ‘Alann’ (original, eh?) on his old EQ server…where he was guildleader of the resident uberguild. Brock Pierce et. al. were also in the guild, which is how they met.

    The guild in question were a bunch of exploiters to boot. Doesn’t really surprise me that someone from there figured out how to cash in IRL on Verant’s ineptitude – they’d been doing it in-game for well over a year by that point.

  • http://www.fourthfightergroup.com No.6

    Surprise!

    People with no discernable conscience in-game continue to exhibit greedy, backstabbing behavior amongst themselves IRL.

    Who would have guessed?

  • UnSub

    I don’t believe for a second that, given the scale of external RMT, that MMO companies can somehow just block it out.

    I agree with Ed above – MMO devs need to create official internal RMT channels that can undercut external RMT providers. It’s not an issue you can police out without either 1) large-scale surveillance systems in place that can ‘follow the money’ wherever it goes and / or 2) without probably hitting a lot of false positives and banning players who may not have done anything wrong. Unless there is close to a 100% chance of getting caught, external RMT services will continue to be used. The only way to fix the problem is with an economic (rather than criminal enforcement) system.

  • James M.

    There is a reason the Complaint in the Debonneville v. Pierce lawsuit reads like a novel– it is. :) -

    I knew these guys well and you have to remember that when someone sues someone else, they fashion a lawsuit that it designed to sway the judge’s opinion in their favor. It is a completely one-sided document, not anything like proven fact.

    Debonneville was one of the four partners of IGE prior to the Goldman Sachs investment and the buyout of Jonathan Yantis and Randy Maslow. My understanding is that he and Pierce has a falling out following the buyout and was removed by Pierce because Debeonneville just wasn’t very good at managing anything, and this became obvious after the two competent partners–Jonathan and Randy– left the company. All of the partners except for Debonneville made a lot of money when Goldman and others invested in the company and purchased a portion of their stock and now Debonneville is pissed off at Pierce about it.

    His lawyer brings up all the old rumors about Pierce cause mudslinging tends to help your case in American courts. Its mostly rehashed rumors that have been out there for years– funny how theres all this stuff rumored about Brock Pierce all the time yet hes never been charged with anything by anyone anywhere let alone convicted of anything.

    I guess the hardcore anti-RMT zealots will jump at any chance to slam Pierce and IGE even if it means recirculating old and untrue rumors that hurts the guy’s reputation and which he is powerless to defend on sites like this. I just kind of get tired of seeing it all the time. IGE was wildly successful and emulated now by thousands of competitors. Seems like a lotta jealousy out there cause Brock Pierce, Jonathan Yantis, Randy Maslow and others got rich doing something we all should have thought of first. Including me. :) -

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  • http://www.markeedragoninc.com Marcus Eikenberry

    It’s the unring that will be heard around the world. Everyone and their mother that has a blog will have it up before the bell is done ringing.

    I’ve worked with all of these guys at one time or another. The mud slinging is not new, nor will it end here. Most all of the players are still very active with RMT and they make way to much money to get away from it.

    Good article as usual. :) I’m always entertained.

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  • Alan Au

    The Streisand effect strikes again!

  • Paks

    That kitten’s looking at me kinda funny…

  • http://www.mmobux.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=760&page=1#pid2127 The Rise and Fall of IGE

    [...] If you’re seeing a picture of a kitten instead of the original content, it’s because Brock Pierce’s attorney took them down. [...]

  • Nicademus

    wtf happened to Bobo the puppy? Is he on strike?

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  • moo

    I like the kitten! I want one!

  • Balnder

    I personally knew IGE, Pierce and Alan back then before their business grew to a multi-mullion venture. While Pierce was the master mind pulling the strings behind the curtains, it was actually Alan’s deep knowledge of the RMT industry what led IGE to its future success. If Pierce walked away from IGE with millions on his back pocket, so should have Alan as he was the working arm that made IGE take off from the beginning. I am sorry to hear Alan got mighty screwed in the end because he deserved the monetary reward :(

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