Evil Evony

[Captain M4d]

If you read Kotaku regularly or surf the Internet, you've probably heard of Evony. Ads for the game have been everywhere--from Google to video game forums, and the most recent ones usually feature big-breasted women.

I didn't know anything about the game besides the presence of ads before tonight, but I did some research, and this veteran video game marketer named Bruce Everiss has a lot of insight into Evony and the game company's questionable ethics:

Eric Lam is a Chinese businessman who owns or is associated with a whole cloud of companies and websites. He was sued by Microsoft for online advertising click fraud. It is thought that Lam owns the gold farming company Wowmine and that he could be earning as much as half a million dollars a day from this alone.


Now it looks like Lam has decided to go first party with his own MMO, thus cutting out the middleman. That game is Evony. And its heritage shows. When you play the game, just about everything in the game can be obtained by paying instead of playing. A blatantly exploitative business model never seen before.


The game itself is a rip off of some very well known games. The game mechanic and some in game content comes from Sid Meier’s highly successful Civilisation series. Much of the graphics came from Age of Empires.


The game itself is so flaky and bugged that it is very easy for things you have paid good money for to just disappear. Lots of people are losing money this way. And, surprise, surprise, Evony never give a refund.

Here's some gameplay footage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6sP5rAx3u4

Here are some of the ads:

Moar here.

So now Bruce and the British publication The Guardian are getting sued by the Evony company for libelous statements. And they're getting sued by an Australian firm.

By using an Australian solicitor Evony make it very difficult for me to defend myself. I have to fly myself and my legal team halfway round the world for every hearing and bringing witnesses in would be extremely expensive. Also Australia has a very old fashioned libel law where the person who thinks they are libeled doesn’t have to prove anything. They can make all the accusations they want and the onus is on me to bring evidence to disprove every one. This is why Warren McKeon Dickson have listed so many silly and obvious things which everyone knows aren’t libel in their letter. For instance they claim that “Evony sends massive amounts of intrusive and offensive spam as part of its advertising the game Evony” is libellous. But everyone has seen the adverts. And in this thread you can read how Evony spammed the Google advertising system.

This is really crazy. I hadn't realized that his Evony company is malicious and fairly intent on silencing the opposition. I'm really tired now, so I'm gonna let you guys take it away.

 

[Raziaar]

Evony.

Enough said.

 

[Dog--]

I wanna play it now, look at those hot babes, man.

 

[Vegeta897]

This is so last month.

Also I've seen ads far more unrelated than that. Where the girls just look like from a random underwear photoshoot, a white background, with no theming at all.

 

[Raziaar]

I've seen ads that feature no women at all and have screenshots from the game.

Those are truly rare nuggets.

 

[JFry]

I played this game for a while. TBH its the best browser game I've ever played. It actually has depth and strategy to it. Personally I was fine with the payment model since to me it was a casual game, but I could see how some people might not like it. However unless you are throwing gobs of money at the game a good clan will always be able to overpower you, so it isn't really a trump everything card.
The advertising is, to be blunt, ridiculous, very cheap way to whore your product. But it works. Not much more I can say about that.

 

[Wanted Bob]

Start your journey now, my lord.

That always made me chuckle.

 

[MorganFreeman911]

Start your journey now, my lord.

That always made me chuckle.

This.

 

[Sulkdodds]

I kind of suspected this to be the case without ever researching it. Interesting stuff!

 

[Raziaar]

Start your journey now, my lord.

That always made me chuckle.

Brains now, my lord!

 

[swan_song1973]

not that that game looks good or anything.