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Someone is taking advantage of the 'Avadon: The Black Fortress' name

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Started by Servant of the Lord February 06, 2013 08:25 PM

6 comments, last by wintertime 11 years, 2 months ago

Servant of the Lord

33,739

Author

February 06, 2013 08:25 PM

I just found this while googling.

Someone created a book called "Avadon: The Black Fortress", with a bunch of keywords to steal the game's traffic, to intentionally mislead consumers to buy their product.

The book sounds like it's just a print-on-demand of copy+pasted Wikipedia articles related to the actual Avadon game. They copied a bunch of articles, it's only 88 pages long, and they're charging $42 dollars for it, seemingly to intentionally scam Jeff Vogel's customers.

Apparently this gentleman has done this alot:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/nethanel-willy

(226 pages, with 30 results a page? That's 6780 scam books that Barnes and Nobles is letting this guy sell)

I'm not sure there's much Jeff Vogel can do about it, since technically this scam is not violating the copyright by just talking about the game, but I sent him an email anyway incase Jeff was unaware of it.

I guess he could (if he wanted to bother with it at all) argue that the scam is intentionally deceiving customers, but the scammer partially covers his back by saying "Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online." and hoping individuals don't read it.

Avadon (the real game), what parts of it I played (I got about 20 hours in before I stopped), was very fun.

Just thought I'd vent a little by posting this.

slicer4ever

6,773

February 06, 2013 08:28 PM

just clicking around on a few books, it plainly states that the majority(if not entire) book is comprised from free sources, so their really shouldn't be anyone that "falls" for this scam.

Check out https://www.facebook.com/LiquidGames for some great games made by me on the Playstation Mobile market.

Servant of the Lord

33,739

Author

February 06, 2013 08:31 PM

Well, certainly no one smart will fall for the scam, but it clearly is an intentional deception and if the guy made so many of them, he must get at least a few purchases per book or he wouldn't continue doing it.

It's really not a big deal, and plenty of junk like this exists in the world, but it just rubbed me the wrong way.

slicer4ever

6,773

February 07, 2013 01:22 AM

i hear you mate, it's defiantly morally questionable that he's allowed to get away with it(and the prices placed on the books are kindof insane for stuff that's free content).

Check out https://www.facebook.com/LiquidGames for some great games made by me on the Playstation Mobile market.

L. Spiro

25,818

February 07, 2013 11:27 PM

You can contact the publisher, International Book Marketing Service Ltd (Jeff Vogel especially can do this) in protest.
It would hold more weight if Jeff Vogel contacted them and he could likely have them do something about it or make them hesitant to work with him in the future.
Petitions might also make them hesitant to work with him in the future.

L. Spiro

I restore Nintendo 64 video-game OST’s into HD! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCtX_wedtZ5BoyQBXEhnVZw/playlists?view=1&sort=lad&flow=grid

TheChubu

9,484

February 08, 2013 01:17 AM

hahaha, some of those are pretty funny. ie, the "Jazz" one.

"I AM ZE EMPRAH OPENGL 3.3 THE CORE, I DEMAND FROM THEE ZE SHADERZ AND MATRIXEZ"

My journals: dustArtemis ECS framework and Making a Terrain Generator

Rakilonn

421

February 08, 2013 07:38 PM

Awesome ! A definition of a word for only $44.00 !
You can't hesitate.

Someone must really be a d****** to earn money shamelessly like that. ( and has too much free time )

If there will be a petition I will sign it gladly.

wintertime

4,154

February 08, 2013 10:13 PM

Such a thing is sadly nothing new. Some months ago I read there is actually a whole network of related scam book publisher companies that basically let a computer pick a random phrase from the internet, collect wikipedia articles containing similar words and put them roughly in a book form, put a random graphic and a random editor name on the cover(sometimes same name for a few thousand books so its impossible to do for a real person) and then offer print on demand of that crappy thing on amazon (not sure if it was on amazon) for an outrageous price and that whole thing they do tenthousandfold.

Someone is taking advantage of the 'Avadon: The Black Fortress' name

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Someone is taking advantage of the 'Avadon: The Black Fortress' name

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