Back in June, I decided to put a moratorium on articles dealing with the pending litigation between David Allen and Quest Online, mainly owing to my desire to publish something about Alganon that didn’t have to do with lawsuits or the back and forth blog posting between Derek Smart and David Allen. That being said, I haven’t had much to talk about lately on the title, although I still push to find something new from the indie MMO. A lot of quotes from Derek Smart detailing the events leading up to and following David Allen’s forced departure and the direction he is taking Alganon, but that’s about it.
So imagine my surprise when, two months after the fact, I receive the above email from Bryan Gottfredson, an attorney acting for David Allen. In his letter, Gottfredson explained to me that my articles quoting Derek Smart were incorrect and causing damage to his client’s (David Allen) reputation. He requested that I remove any and all mention of David Allen from my website. I agreed to remove any factually inaccurate information from MMO Fallout, however I would not perform a website-wide sweep of all David Allen-related material. I have yet to hear back.
In the meantime, I took both the related articles on MMO Fallout and the form I received, and had them looked over by a defense attorney, and my articles rated 100% legal. I also took my case to Quest Online to see if I could get an idea about what threat David Allen might pose if I kept the articles up, and I won’t mention anything in detail but, in short: There was no threat whatsoever. Derek Smart was very kind to contact me personally, sacrificing both time (and I would assume funds) to have their own lawyer look at and take care of the document I received. I was again assured that everything on MMO Fallout was 100% within the law.
Derek Smart has a blog post up where he mentions me as a side note, where you can actually read the entirety of the legal document there (I don’t believe WordPress allows me to upload .pdf files) as well as Smart’s own thoughts on the lawsuit between Quest Online and David Allen (which, from my understanding of his post, has been in settlement for a while now).
“Apparently, that knuckle-head David Allen who was fired from yet another venture that he started – and then sued – has been sending out toothless and baseless threatening letters to websites.”
I didn’t write this as some sort of gloating technique, or in some half-hearted attempt to “expose” David Allen, or incite something further. I decided, and then initially went back on my decision to publish this, but ultimately I’m going ahead with it because I wanted to discuss that it is not business as usual here at MMO Fallout. I’m not like the bloggers you see publishing hate-mongering articles so they can be threatened by the people they write about, and then act as some sort of martyr who is being oppressed for using his freedom of speech as an excuse to run his mouth like an ill-informed jackass.
I do not run a sensationalist website, but I am regularly fairly blunt in some of my articles, and this is not the first time someone “in the biz” has disapproved of my articles, although until now that has always been a request to complement some sort of bad news with good news, usually in the form of “hey check out this update we have planned.” I don’t publish any of these because, quite frankly, it is the business of myself and the person sending it, and no one else’s. I want to build and maintain trust between myself and developers, not destroy it.
So I hope you accept my apologies for this diversion, and I want you to know that nothing has changed. I want to again thank both Derek Smart for stepping in to help me, and a very good friend who offered to defend me were the situation to escalate. I’m keeping this post untagged because I want as little attention brought to it as possible, as I know fully well what happens with misplaced anger (ahem, Mortal Online article)
-Omali
MMO Fallout 
Keep up the good work, Omali. I don’t comment much on your posts, but your site is one of the few blogs – perhaps the only blog – that I feel I can actually treat as a legitimate news source. I’m glad to hear that won’t be changing.
It makes me very happy to see comments like that.
I have an editorial coming out in the next day or so that I think a lot of people will enjoy and agree with. I also have a considerable project I’m working on for MMO Fallout that will hopefully cement my intentions with this website.
-Omali
I’m curious. Did the letter actually say you would be sued? Can you post the whole thing and not just the first sentence?
Nevermind – Smart posted it here:
Click to access Allen_to_MMOFallout.pdf
It sounds to me like all they did was ask you to remove the false information from the site (which was probably just a couple Derek Smart quotes)
…Which is not your fault at all, and they sounded very nice about it. There were no threats of lawsuit in there at all.
Derek has a long history of saying one thing in one interview, and then the complete opposite in a second.
It seems to me that anyone who uses Smart as a source is pretty much guaranteed to be posting lies and false information. It’s only a matter of time before someone asks them to take it down.
You shouldn’t worry about it. Keep up the good posts.
Hello Bill,
They didn’t threaten, directly or indirectly, to sue me, and I did try my best to refrain from implying that it was anything other than a letter asking me to remove anything related to David Allen from my website. That being said, my past experience dealing with these types of notices is that they usually end up being the tip of the iceberg, although that doesn’t appear to be the case this time.
What got me to write the article was that the letter was so impersonal. Part of what I’ve done on MMO Fallout is to open myself, and this website, to both players and developers. Hell, I’ve listed my real name, email address, and numerous ways to contact me that are virtually free. According to my own information, that .pdf likely cost between $400-$800 for a conversation we could have had face to face (well through Xfire or email anyway).
As for whoever is right, I wrote those articles not taking sides. Given that the lawsuit was still going on at the time, anything stated about it by either side should have been taken as “alleged.” Remember: Innocence is in the eyes of the law, and ultimately the law did not find David Allen on the winning side.
I’ve been conversing with Derek Smart behind the scenes, and I can say I stopped worrying immediately when he contacted me offering to help. I’m keeping our conversations private, but if you look at it from my direction where one side is offering help (and actually doing something about it) and the other is paying their lawyer hundreds of dollars for something they could have fired off in an email to me for free, choosing sides is very, very easy.
It’s 4am. I should probably get some sleep.
-Omali