Coriolanus

Florida Attorney General to Investigate IGE:

Florida Attorney General’s Office of Economic Crimes Issues Investigative Subpoena to IGE U.S., a.k.a. Affinity Media at IGE Class Action Consumer Info Site


Today we learned that the Florida Attorney General’s Office of Economic Crimes issued an investigative subpoena for records to IGE U.S., a.k.a. Affinity Media. The subpoena was issued pursuant to the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act in the course of an official investigation. The subpoena states that the purpose and scope of the investigation extends to possible unfair and deceptive trade practices which involve the advertising and marketing practices of I.G.E. U.S.
The subpoena seeks records relating to the distribution, marketing, pricing and sale of World of Warcraft gold. The subpoena also seeks documents relating to the organization and structure of IGE U.S., Affinity Media, and IGE Ltd. The subpoena seeks financial and sales information, the identity of specific World of Warcraft accounts owned or controlled by IGE, the identity of World of Warcraft accounts that IGE has power leveled, and the IP addresses IGE used to log into World of Warcraft to distribute products sold by IGE. The subpoena also seeks documents which show all websites owned or controlled by IGE or its affiliates at any time.

Illuminator

hot diggety dawg :D

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Bow down before the one you serve. You're going to get what you deserve.

kaif

but why? trying to get some tax revenue out of IGE?

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Ulric

I'd love to see these guys burn. IGE is flagrant in MMOs, and at the very least, a tax evasion charge and exposing all of their assets/affiliates would be a major blow to them. It wouldn't hurt my feelings at all.

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Grumpy Dwarf catch phrases:
"I'll try to be nicer if you try to be smarter."
"I spent my reward on ale and whores... oh, and this great big, bloody axe."

drychnath

That's... pretty.

Now, once Florida has all of that data, can Blizzard get a copy? Does FoIA apply at the state level? If not, does Florida have it's own FoIA?

Then they could use it to mass ban all PL'd accounts. And if they've kept enough of their own data, they could pretty much see every account that has ever interacted with this list of seller/deliverer accounts...

Looks like Blizzard is about to make a ton of money when people go buy new cd keys to restart their WoW experience, not to mention all the new accounts IGE will buy to start their farming all over again (you don't actually think they're going away, do you?)

See, Blizzard's got this part down pat... You can pretty much double your development budget through mass bannings because their development budgets are supposedly based on box/cd sales

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EQ2: Avenger Drychnath Malcherion -AB

Everything is on a great scale upon this continent, the rivers are immense, the climate violent in heat and cold, the prospects magnificent, the thunder and lightning tremendous, the disorders incident to the country make every constitution tremble. Our own blunders here, our misconduct, our losses, our disgraces, our ruin Are On a Great Scale.
-Lord Carlisle

Emanji

That's gay, how else can I get back in the game without IGE gold to gear out my toon? $.90 a plat, you can't beat that.

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This is why I'm hot.

Tater

Is this going to screw over people who bought gold at all? OR like emanji said people who buy plat?

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The Tater is retired, but this sig owns so ill keep it!

LFG

I said from the beginning, it all comes down to tax revenue.

There is no possible way they were reporting income paid to people who farmed for them, just to start.

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Letum

True that.

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This is the art of ruin
This is the resolution
The end of all progress
The death of evolution
It bleeds all life away

LFG

I'd like something explained to me.

There was a big ruckas on this site a while back when Affinity Media, who owns Zam/Allakhazams, claimed to have sold and fully divested themselves of IGE.

At the time, I said "prove it", but then dropped that later because it wasn't worth arguing about.

In legal documents filed with the state of Florida - see:

http://www.igeclassaction.com/compla...Withdrawal.pdf

IGE legally represents themselves as "IGE US, LLC, n/k/a Affinity Media Holdings, LLC ("IGE US").

The "n/k/a" stands for "now known as".

When selling a company, the sale usually includes all assets and liabilities of that company, including future risk of any lawsuit associated with past activities. If required to defend the sold company for potential liability incurred, the seller would normally do that with a hold harmless clause in the sale documents.

But anyone filing legal documents saying they are the same legal entity as the company they claimed to have sold OBVIOUSLY DID NOT SELL THAT COMPANY.

Did Affinity Media lie when it said it had sold/completely divested itself of IGE? According to the legal documents they've filed, it sure looks like that to me.

I'd like an explanation of this, if what I've stated above isn't considered accurate by IGE/Zam. I'm not being hostile, but I do want to know if all that previous noise about selling IGE was just a big fat lie.

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