Two of the world’s largest companies specializing in the development of mobile strategy games are preparing for trial. We drank too well at a Casual Connect party and had a fight over a girl.
Photo: Sports Illustrated
A conference party can lead to a trial.
Not always, not everywhere, not with everyone, but it can. This is especially true for those who dream of putting in place the owner of a company whose game earns millions of dollars a day. Don’t you believe it? Ask Daniel Wiggins, director of Kabam corporate development, who unsuccessfully argued with Gabe Leydon, CEO of Machine Zone.
It all started on August 12 in San Francisco quite innocuously. From a skirmish between managers, each of whom defended his company’s projects. They didn’t go into their pockets for a word. According to Wiggins’ court statement, the author of Game of War – Leydon – mocked the practice of Kabam buying expensive licenses to develop games based on motives.
Here we just started talking about the Game of War advertising campaign, in the promotion of which the image of Kate Upton, a figure-skater model, advertising, as a rule, swimwear, was used. According to Wiggins, Leydon boasted that unlike Kabam, which pays significant amounts of money as royalties to talents and works under their licenses, Machine Zone paid only one million dollars to get the rights to use the image of Kate Upton. Despite the limited amount, Machine Zone did not have to pay anything more to the actress.
Apparently, this was the last straw for Wiggins. After such a statement, he said that the entire Machine Zone advertising campaign was a waste of money. Wanting to back up his words, as noted in the court document on behalf of Jason Park, who witnessed the conversation, the Kabam employee hinted that he had seen the profit and loss report of Machine Zone. That is, he knows what he’s talking about.
It was probably unnecessary. According to Park, such a statement upset Leydon very much, who immediately began calling his lawyer, accusing Wiggins of stealing trade secrets, and at the same time promising that he would be fired.
As a result, Machine Zone is currently suing Kabam. According to Leydon’s statement, Wiggins referred to facts about Machine Zone that he would not have known about if he had not seen the document. According to the lawsuit, Machine Zone does not represent how the document got into Kabam’s hands, but transfers the case to the court, since it considers it a primary task to prevent its use by a competitor.
But was there really a kidnapping?
Kabam assures that it is not. According to the company and Wiggins himself, he was upset by Leydon’s aggressive position. Being under the influence of alcohol, he decided to put the CEO of a competing company in place with his statement. Moreover, forensic experts did not find any signs of the document on Wiggins’ computer and phone.
So it’s possible that Wiggins’ criticism just hit the nail on the head. If the advertising campaign with Upton had been successful, it would have been enough for Leydon to tell his opponent that he was lying. If the campaign with Upton really turned out to be unsuccessful (which, let’s be honest, is not only Wiggins talking about), then it is not surprising that Leydon was so offended by this statement.
In general, we will monitor the situation.
Sources: http://recode.net, http://venturebeat.com