This was the first in a series of sweeps intended to reassert control over the Star Citizen narrative and minimize the ability for new potential backers to realize what a scam it is.
I'll give you three guesses as to who initiated this, and why.
As I wrote (
1,
2) earlier, it's worth pursuing for posterity alone. So I am going to be do a blog about it.
As I wrote last week, CIG has succeeded in using
BACKER FUNDS to outspend and subsequently force The Escapist owner Defy Media to pull an Society of Professional Journalists award winning article, critical of the Star Citizen project. Even as most of what was researched and written about the article - two years ago - already came to pass.
Both the article and Chris Roberts defamatory response (against the site, the writer, and of course myself), have been taken down; apparently by mutual agreement in which both sides just decided to stop spending attorney fees on "bullshit".
Apparently since The Escapist is not a "going concern" for Defy, unlike their other more profitable enterprises (they raised $70m in Series B funding back in Sept 2016), they seem to have opted to stop spending money on legal bills for the site.
I continue to dig into this; but now that I have more info, I am in the process of writing an investigative blog about it for posterity.
This sets a horrid precedent. Imagine if any other game publisher had pulled a stunt like this against a news site.
- Defy Media stood (1, 2) by the 2015 story, which btw, later won an SPJ award for the writer
- The Escapist scaled down a year later because the site, like most, is losing money
- I have it on good authority that they have been going back and forth with legal bullshit since 2015. Just like I was with Ortwin back in 2015
- Legal bills cost money
- A parent company for a site that's not making money, isn't going to continue spending money on inconsequential bullshit that's not going to MAKE them money
- CIG is mostly funded by backer money that we know of. Aside from unknown loans and investors
- CIG is in a legal song and dance with Defy Media, who has to respond via attorneys
- Attorneys cost money. CIG has disposable income via backers. Defy does not have money to blow on The Escapist. They raised $70m in Sept 2016 to further their operations (they have other profitable properties)
- It appears both sides decided to withdraw, rather than continue spending money on inconsequential bullshit.
- The End
If Defy Media was willing to continue spending money to fight a story they
PUBLICLY stood behind, it stands to reason that it would be in court by now. Not a mutual removal of the stories - 2 years later. Especially considering that the onus was on CIG to disprove the allegations cited in the article; while defending the defamatory statements made in CIG's diatribe. CIG would have completely
LOST such a case; and especially since I would have been dragged into it
