Even after he returned the products it isn't like he got nothing from this... He got a huge cloud. His videos have normally 2000 - 5000 views. The one where he talks about the pinkertons has 50k views and the one where he opened the Aftermath products had even more. I am not sure if it was worth it, tho. He took the leak videos down after all.
The worst thing that came out of this is that now people are just parroting "PInKeRtOnS" on every magic social media post.
It's going to be the new "spam Greed" for the next six months. Everyone knows sending in the Pinkertons was overkill and inappropriate, the spammers just going to go at it nonstop until oldschoolmtg is "avenged" or something. Between this and the 30th Edition fiasco, I'm sure someone's going to get hurt, and it'll be completely unwarranted.
A guy ruins the marketing of a single set of 50 cards half a month in advance and he deserves to have notorious extra judicial thugs visit him personally?
Like, I want to be super clear here: a corporation dug through an incredibly small YouTube channel for any discernable information, used those to physically located someone, and sent armed men to his door to collect three boxes of cards, because legally they couldn't do anything otherwise.
"We all know it was overkill and inappropriate," so why do you seem more upset by the people responding to it, however it may be worded, than the company who did it?
Oldschoolmtg isn't a martyr or anything like that, but, like, this is a horrifying precedent. This is how far they're willing to go for the sake of 50 cards in a hyper-niche supplemental set? And the marketing of this product has such a tight grip on people's minds that they're willing to just...overlook this? That people are willing to basically say "Sure, that was excessive, but what did he expect? He had it coming. I'm more concerned with all those people annoying me, personally."
A guy ruins the marketing of a single set of 50 cards half a month in advance and he deserves to have notorious extra judicial thugs visit him personally?
This is how far they're willing to go for the sake of 50 cards in a hyper-niche supplemental set?
I mean you have to put this in the historical context of MTG cards being stolen and leaked every single set sometimes to an absurd, entire-uncut-sheets-stolen-from-factories degree. This is from a corporate standpoint a total disaster and a consistent IP violation that usurps their entire control over their own products.
The whole point of retaining security companies like the pinkertons is to investigate internal affairs like this (including unionization) and the goal of this investigation is definitely not just taking down this one youtuber but determining who his supplier is, who is at best in violation of of their sales license. It's not like they just hired the pinkertons to do this.
People are still upset about the violation of consumer confidence with Magic 30th. Only to have someone who legally acquired a product in advance, through human error (otherwise litigation would be involved and announced, as it was with the theft of the Ixalan sheet) become an example of corporate flex on a lone, lowly consumer with nothing more than a minor YouTube channel, relative to a billion dollar industry exercising its privilege (within the context of lacking a legal leg to stand on, no less). It's an unfortunate narrative from a PR perspective for WOTC, before factoring in the Pinkerton's historical record, Oldschoolmagic clearly being a patron of the game that happened upon a meager opportunity of minimal benefit few would resist regardless, or the sight of his wife crying at the door when thugs appeared to repossess legal product they weren't entitled to relinquish, through intimidation.
It's just not a good look.
You know what would have been a favorable approach? Realizing the guy is clearly a fan of the game, that there was a mistake, and cultivating something positive by offering him an alternative opportunity (like spoiling future cards on his channel, growing his viewership through an approved and amicable manner, for example) and alternative product, in exchange for what he purchased early. Thus preserving the integrity of their consumer base while diffusing a regrettable, but not illegal, situation. Brute force and resentment was selected instead, and the fields were salted behind them. After M30, people are rightfully disgusted.
Only to have someone who legally acquired a product in advance, through human error (otherwise litigation would be involved and announced, as it was with the theft of the Ixalan sheet)
The Pinkertons being involved does not preclude litigation. The Ixalan foil sheet theft involved them too, it's just no one spoke about it until long after Wizards announced anything.
Now that I think about it didn't Hasbro stock go up recently because Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro bought themselves an Ethics Award to cover for the new Dungeons & Dragons movie bombing at the box office? How is hiring Pinkerton thugs to threaten and bully Magic players / collectors good ethics?
A guy ruins the marketing of a single set of 50 cards half a month in advance and he deserves to have notorious extra judicial thugs visit him personally?
This is how far they're willing to go for the sake of 50 cards in a hyper-niche supplemental set?
I mean you have to put this in the historical context of MTG cards being stolen and leaked every single set sometimes to an absurd, entire-uncut-sheets-stolen-from-factories degree. This is from a corporate standpoint a total disaster and a consistent IP violation that usurps their entire control over their own products.
The whole point of retaining security companies like the pinkertons is to investigate internal affairs like this (including unionization) and the goal of this investigation is definitely not just taking down this one youtuber but determining who his supplier is, who is at best in violation of of their sales license. It's not like they just hired the pinkertons to do this.
Yes the supplier for oldschoolmtg SHOULD be at fault here but it's the fact that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro can punish ANYBODY they don't like with the Pinkertons given their recent track record of being very anti-consumer or more precisely anti-LGS with Secret Lairs. Hiring the Pinkertons in this particular scenario IMO was completely unethical and it sets a very bad precedent for other competitors of Magic: The Gathering like Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon TCG to follow suit which fortunately they're smart enough not to because they understand that in order to stay in business you want to have good customer service and public relations which is something that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro lacks.
Now does the impact that these March of the Machine: Aftermath spoilers had on the Secondary Market really warrant Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro hiring the Pinkertons in this scenario? What impact does this have for MTG Finance? There would be nothing to gain from this. Nobody wins in this scenario. If they're THAT worried about price fluctuations from cards getting spoiled whether intentionally or unintentionally then that probably says more about where the companies' best interest lies. It's obviously not us the players but rather the shareholders and people who play the MTG Finance game. They're worried more about specific cards or decks going up in value for no reason and being placed in a position of damage control only worsens things.
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
BTW if anyone thinks WotC/Hasbro will quit these tactics/shenanigans out of the goodness of their hearts, I have some oceanfront property in Nevada to sell you.
Until someone stands up to the bully, the bully will keep bullying.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Only to have someone who legally acquired a product in advance,
Thus preserving the integrity of their consumer base while diffusing a regrettable, but not illegal, situation.
I feel like this is the point where a lot of folks are losing the plot. It was actually not legal for him to acquire those cards. His supplier was not legally authorized to sell them at the time that they did. Oldschoolmtg was in possession of legally stolen goods. It's much more likely that the litigation will involve the supplier who violated contract and copyright and has more to lose than the third party (unless collusion can be established) but none of this stuff is legal. It sure feels like it should be legal, right? It's just a mistake and so on? There's leaks all the time and it's mostly just building hype, right? No, that is just not how law works.
Don't get me wrong, violating the law is fun and can be pretty profitable and I won't judge anyone for doing it alone, but it's a mistake to assume that just because something seems morally ok that it's legally ok. It's illegal to feed homeless people in a lot of places here, doesn't mean you shouldn't.
Reproducing wotc's intellectual property (here the card art and the written text) without their permission or license to do so is in fact illegal, which is why DMCA takedowns work.
It's obviously not us the players but rather the shareholders and people who play the MTG Finance game.
Yes, they are a publically traded business in a capitalist economic system. They have a specifically declared fiduciary duty to their shareholders to maximize profit. Their shareholders could sue them if they did not explicitly pursue the maximum shareholder value.
It sucks, right? It sure would be better if we existed in an economic system where companies had a fiduciary duty directly to the communities in which they exist, or to the people as a whole.
It was actually not legal for him to acquire those cards.
Can you provide the legal statute or a link to it? I legitimately want to know. I would think the supplier to OldSchool broke the "sell by" agreement with WotC/Hasbro. That does not make it stolen goods. They were more than likely paid for those cards by the Supplier. Supplier broke an "embargo" or "sell by" date with a company. I believe this is a matter for civil courts, but again I am no law expert by any means.
So Distributor/Seller had a "breach of contract" with WotC/Hasbro by either selling them to soon by purpose or accident. Goods are not stolen that are legally paid for under contract. Goods can be released before a sell by date and that would be breach of contract, a civil matter. I believe, again, no expert here.
Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
You know what would have been a favorable approach? Realizing the guy is clearly a fan of the game, that there was a mistake, and cultivating something positive by offering him an alternative opportunity (like spoiling future cards on his channel, growing his viewership through an approved and amicable manner, for example) and alternative product, in exchange for what he purchased early.
That's an excellent idea.
...
If the goal is to make other youtubers follow in his footsteps in order to become a previews partner...
Otherwise buffntuff said what I wanted to say as well. Can you legally buy a product that was illegally sold?
Also, love that Wizard's statement reveals that they actually tried to reach him via phone several times before they sent the pinkertons. "Couldn't they have tried exploring other methods first." Everyone said. Turns out they did. It's almost as if WotC and Hasbro (I assume they coordinated on this) is a company and its in their own best interest to solve this issue without a potential PR disaster and spending money on the pinkertons.
Occam's Razor was right after all, who woulda thunk.
If the goal is to make other youtubers follow in his footsteps in order to become a previews partner...
For real, sending goons to someone's house seems harsh to people, but it's an incredible act of deterrence for these acts in the future if people leaking future sets know the pinkies could be breathing down their necks.
Honestly, from what I've seen, people are more mad that they gave the pinkertons business than how they treated Oldschoolmtg. Hiring thugs is one thing, but hiring anti-union thugs triggers people on reddit like you wouldn't believe.
Goods are not stolen that are legally paid for under contract.
There's your answer there. Obviously I don't have the contract in front of me but generally the way they're written is that the cards are sold with the express presumption that wotc continues to own the IP rights to the cards and suppliers are merely licensing said material until such time as they're per contract available to be sold. Selling them outside the bounds of the contract would be a theft by conversion. It would probably go to civil court, but it's not because it isn't illegal more so because the state doesn't have a well defined interest here. Sometimes it does go to criminal court if it's egregious enough.
Honestly, from what I've seen, people are more mad that they gave the pinkertons business than how they treated Oldschoolmtg. Hiring thugs is one thing, but hiring anti-union thugs triggers people on reddit like you wouldn't believe.
You know the funniest thing about all this is that the pinkertons went bankrupt back in the 90s and securitas security services bought up their branding and operates whats now known as the pinkertons. These are technically a totally different set of union busters.
You know what would have been a favorable approach? Realizing the guy is clearly a fan of the game, that there was a mistake, and cultivating something positive by offering him an alternative opportunity (like spoiling future cards on his channel, growing his viewership through an approved and amicable manner, for example) and alternative product, in exchange for what he purchased early.
That's an excellent idea.
...
If the goal is to make other youtubers follow in his footsteps in order to become a previews partner...
Otherwise buffntuff said what I wanted to say as well. Can you legally buy a product that was illegally sold?
Also, love that Wizard's statement reveals that they actually tried to reach him via phone several times before they sent the pinkertons. "Couldn't they have tried exploring other methods first." Everyone said. Turns out they did. It's almost as if WotC and Hasbro (I assume they coordinated on this) is a company and its in their own best interest to solve this issue without a potential PR disaster and spending money on the pinkertons.
Occam's Razor was right after all, who woulda thunk.
How often is it that such mistakes occur? Not often. The opportunity doesn't exist frequently enough to warrant my proposed solution serving as an incentive. This situation is an exception, not the standard for leaks. If people who have active YT channels like OSM intentionally steal product to become spoiler partners with WOTC, then they will be dealt with accordingly via the law. But the OSM situation wasn't addressed by an attorney or law enforcement, was it? He was addressed via the Pinkertons. There were no legal obligations here, it was a simple mistake that while warranting investigation, could have been diffused amicably.
Who is to say OSM didn't see missed calls from an unknown or spam risk number and ignore them, over the span of 15 minutes? This all occurred within barely a week. We have the whole set now, all 50 cards of it, and people are still bemoaning that it revealed nothing, lore-wise.
Who is to say OSM didn't see missed calls from an unknown or spam risk number and ignore them, over the span of 15 minutes? This all occurred within barely a week. We have the whole set now, all 50 cards of it, and people are still bemoaning that it revealed nothing, lore-wise.
Sad part is that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro is so creatively bankrupt over their lore when it comes to Magic: The Gathering that they could have AI do all the work for them and make it more competent in terms of narrative and storytelling despite lacking the human element. I think that's why there's a current Writers Strike going on (unlike the one in 2007) because more businesses are using AI to write their scripts instead of more "woke" material by actual writers that's causing them to lose more money and hurt their bottom line.
It's a Catch-22 where If writers decide to go "woke" then that leads to AI cleaning up the mess causing people to lose their jobs where even If they don't the threat of AI will continue to pressure them out of their current jobs. The current state of the Japanese Anime / Manga Industry is also in a similar predicament as the writers in Hollywood affected by the current Writers Strike potentially losing their jobs to AI but for different reasons. Japan seems to be looking into AI to make up for the current stagnation of the Anime / Manga Industry which is very dangerous IMO.
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Does 'woke' even mean anything anymore or is it just some ominous word of the season where you waggle your fingers menacingly and do a spooky sound. OoooOOOoooo, don't let the woke mob writers get you. They're coming for your industry. OooooOOOooooo.
Sad part is that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro is so creatively bankrupt over their lore when it comes to Magic: The Gathering that they could have AI do all the work for them and make it more competent in terms of narrative and storytelling despite lacking the human element. I think that's why there's a current Writers Strike going on (unlike the one in 2007) because more businesses are using AI to write their scripts instead of more "woke" material by actual writers that's causing them to lose more money and hurt their bottom line.
It's a Catch-22 where If writers decide to go "woke" then that leads to AI cleaning up the mess causing people to lose their jobs where even If they don't the threat of AI will continue to pressure them out of their current jobs.
The reason there's a writers strike right now is because the WGA contract ended may 1st and negotiations over a new contract broke down. The reason the negotiations broke down is because WGA is angling to get writers to be paid residuals from streaming services the same way they used to be paid residuals on broadcast. Streaming services don't wanna pay that money because they've been getting real used to running shows on the cheap and lowballing everyone except the big name actors who have to angle themselves into being executive producers of every show just to get paid.
The current whole marketing push for these GPT powered textual AI programs started just a few months ago well into the contract negotiations time for WGA, and GPTs are very much not yet capable of putting together coherent movie or TV scripts without someone else at the wheel to edit the output into usable stuff.
The magic the gathering plot is pretty messy, but this has more to do with corporate timelines and interference with creative than it does the creative team itself. When the mandate on high is to produce something like seven sets a year and come up with big event sets every other year and a constantly changing status quo in terms of the characters and their abilities, you end up with a lot of rushed first drafts getting pushed in production because there's zero time for rewrites. If you remember the heyday of sets that came out with entire novels that was also a time when blocks were three sets long and all took place in a single plane with a 3 sets and one core set release schedule, meaning you were gonna spend an entire year in one place instead of what feels like about 2 months. Using AI to slap together plots isn't going to solve this sort of fundamental problem with the creative side of magic.
How often is it that such mistakes occur? Not often. The opportunity doesn't exist frequently enough to warrant my proposed solution serving as an incentive. This situation is an exception, not the standard for leaks.
I think the only exception to a normal leak here is that it was put up on a fairly popular youtuber's main feed with himself listed as the source of the leaks, rather than a burner posting it on mtg reddit or imgur. If he had put up even the mildest of facade and pretended that he got these images from some rando behind seven proxies on imgur and he's merely reporting on a possible leak then literally none of this would have happened.
Used in the pejorative sense, it never meant anything to begin with. Some people have a very vested interest in demonizing the concept of basic human decency, and "politically correct" was starting to lose its punch, so they started popularizing a new term.
And to keep things on-topic, hiring PMC's to cover up your mistakes is some serious Shadowrun Megacorp bulls**t. It's like Hasbro is begging me to never give them any more money. I don't care what the specifics were, I don't care what he did or didn't do - even if he'd broken into Wizards HQ and swiped those packs Mission Impossible style, corporate use of PMC's is never, ever, ever justified.
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Cheeseburger, french fries, chocolate shake, somebody's mind I's about to take!
Ok im just gonna rip the band aid off my Curiosity is too big
why is aftermath so bad? besides some of the cards being off on revealing whats happened after mom like Tranquil Frillback
Also was it expected to be modern horizons powerful or something? Because they literally said its a standard legal. Or is it another one of those petitions to stop making products disgusied as commander products and focus on the other formats.
Does 'woke' even mean anything anymore or is it just some ominous word of the season where you waggle your fingers menacingly and do a spooky sound. OoooOOOoooo, don't let the woke mob writers get you. They're coming for your industry. OooooOOOooooo.
"Woke" at this point just means "people with empathy" for those on the right side of the political spectrum. After that it means nothing.
Ok im just gonna rip the band aid off my Curiosity is too big
why is aftermath so bad? besides some of the cards being off on revealing whats happened after mom like Tranquil Frillback
Also was it expected to be modern horizons powerful or something? Because they literally said its a standard legal. Or is it another one of those petitions to stop making products disgusied as commander products and focus on the other formats.
Aftermath is bad because since it's only a 50 card Standard legal booster set with 5 cards per booster pack it's Expected Value (EV) is so low (as in Fallen Empires and Homelands low) that Local Game Stores (LGSs) aren't able to flip it for money as good as previous Standard sets which had more than 50 cards and they probably aren't making as much money on the card singles for the set either. Why? Because with a set THAT small you're basically pulling the exact same cards over and over in every booster pack where you're just better off buying one box to get everything you need out of the set and that's it. Aside from a few good Commander cards like Nissa, Resurgent Animist there's really not that much demand for Aftermath and is likely to sit on a shelf collecting dust at a Local Game Store (LGS) similar to If they had already ordered pallets of Dragon's Maze years ago that they can't even liquidate and sell because nobody wants it.
Given Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro's strict release schedule for Paper Magic, I could even argue that Aftermath was rushed into production and had no time to add more cards to the set before release to where the Expected Value (EV) would've been no where near as bad as it is right now. You can't really make this comparison to other small Standard sets like Fallen Empires and Homelands in the past unless there was overprinted product for Paper Magic LONG before Hasbro bought out Wizards of the Coast back in the late 90's. I highly doubt this was the case unless you go all the way back to when Chronicles almost killed Paper Magic and resulted in the creation of the Reserve List nearly 30 years ago because collectors didn't want to lose money. There is a big concern with the company lowering the amount of cards printed in new Standard sets to screw over LGSs by lowering their EV.
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Ok im just gonna rip the band aid off my Curiosity is too big
why is aftermath so bad? besides some of the cards being off on revealing whats happened after mom like Tranquil Frillback
Also was it expected to be modern horizons powerful or something? Because they literally said its a standard legal. Or is it another one of those petitions to stop making products disgusied as commander products and focus on the other formats.
Aftermath is bad because since it's only a 50 card Standard legal booster set with 5 cards per booster pack it's Expected Value (EV) is so low (as in Fallen Empires and Homelands low) that Local Game Stores (LGSs) aren't able to flip it for money as good as previous Standard sets which had more than 50 cards and they probably aren't making as much money on the card singles for the set either. Why? Because with a set THAT small you're basically pulling the exact same cards over and over in every booster pack where you're just better off buying one box to get everything you need out of the set and that's it. Aside from a few good Commander cards like Nissa, Resurgent Animist there's really not that much demand for Aftermath and is likely to sit on a shelf collecting dust at a Local Game Store (LGS) similar to If they had already ordered pallets of Dragon's Maze years ago that they can't even liquidate and sell because nobody wants it.
Given Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro's strict release schedule for Paper Magic, I could even argue that Aftermath was rushed into production and had no time to add more cards to the set before release to where the Expected Value (EV) would've been no where near as bad as it is right now. You can't really make this comparison to other small Standard sets like Fallen Empires and Homelands in the past unless there was overprinted product for Paper Magic LONG before Hasbro bought out Wizards of the Coast back in the late 90's. I highly doubt this was the case unless you go all the way back to when Chronicles almost killed Paper Magic and resulted in the creation of the Reserve List nearly 30 years ago because collectors didn't want to lose money. There is a big concern with the company lowering the amount of cards printed in new Standard sets to screw over LGSs by lowering their EV.
That's also not bringing up the story, which this set was supposed to set up, doesn't exist. The best this has is two parents died, planeswalkers lost their sparks (but not all of them did, some lost them in different ways, and the multiverse randomly put one woman's spark in a box for some reason), and a gay couple made a clockwork dinosaur. That's it. This "story that will push magic into its next era" has next to no story in it. This is especially true where they have random limited cards in this undraftable set for no reason, they have no value, don't even go into Commander decks, and tell even less story than Training Grounds.
That's also not bringing up the story, which this set was supposed to set up, doesn't exist. The best this has is two parents died, planeswalkers lost their sparks (but not all of them did, some lost them in different ways, and the multiverse randomly put one woman's spark in a box for some reason), and a gay couple made a clockwork dinosaur. That's it. This "story that will push magic into its next era" has next to no story in it. This is especially true where they have random limited cards in this undraftable set for no reason, they have no value, don't even go into Commander decks, and tell even less story than Training Grounds.
It's no wonder why the Intellectual Property (IP) for Magic: The Gathering is so weak because there's no one passionate enough at Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro who cares enough about the story and lore as much as the unique game design that's set it apart from other card games that are much more linear in design.
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America Bless Christ Jesus
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
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Spoiler Editor"Hired goons."
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset.
Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
Like, I want to be super clear here: a corporation dug through an incredibly small YouTube channel for any discernable information, used those to physically located someone, and sent armed men to his door to collect three boxes of cards, because legally they couldn't do anything otherwise.
"We all know it was overkill and inappropriate," so why do you seem more upset by the people responding to it, however it may be worded, than the company who did it?
Oldschoolmtg isn't a martyr or anything like that, but, like, this is a horrifying precedent. This is how far they're willing to go for the sake of 50 cards in a hyper-niche supplemental set? And the marketing of this product has such a tight grip on people's minds that they're willing to just...overlook this? That people are willing to basically say "Sure, that was excessive, but what did he expect? He had it coming. I'm more concerned with all those people annoying me, personally."
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Spoiler EditorI mean you have to put this in the historical context of MTG cards being stolen and leaked every single set sometimes to an absurd, entire-uncut-sheets-stolen-from-factories degree. This is from a corporate standpoint a total disaster and a consistent IP violation that usurps their entire control over their own products.
The whole point of retaining security companies like the pinkertons is to investigate internal affairs like this (including unionization) and the goal of this investigation is definitely not just taking down this one youtuber but determining who his supplier is, who is at best in violation of of their sales license. It's not like they just hired the pinkertons to do this.
It's just not a good look.
You know what would have been a favorable approach? Realizing the guy is clearly a fan of the game, that there was a mistake, and cultivating something positive by offering him an alternative opportunity (like spoiling future cards on his channel, growing his viewership through an approved and amicable manner, for example) and alternative product, in exchange for what he purchased early. Thus preserving the integrity of their consumer base while diffusing a regrettable, but not illegal, situation. Brute force and resentment was selected instead, and the fields were salted behind them. After M30, people are rightfully disgusted.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
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Spoiler EditorYes the supplier for oldschoolmtg SHOULD be at fault here but it's the fact that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro can punish ANYBODY they don't like with the Pinkertons given their recent track record of being very anti-consumer or more precisely anti-LGS with Secret Lairs. Hiring the Pinkertons in this particular scenario IMO was completely unethical and it sets a very bad precedent for other competitors of Magic: The Gathering like Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon TCG to follow suit which fortunately they're smart enough not to because they understand that in order to stay in business you want to have good customer service and public relations which is something that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro lacks.
Now does the impact that these March of the Machine: Aftermath spoilers had on the Secondary Market really warrant Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro hiring the Pinkertons in this scenario? What impact does this have for MTG Finance? There would be nothing to gain from this. Nobody wins in this scenario. If they're THAT worried about price fluctuations from cards getting spoiled whether intentionally or unintentionally then that probably says more about where the companies' best interest lies. It's obviously not us the players but rather the shareholders and people who play the MTG Finance game. They're worried more about specific cards or decks going up in value for no reason and being placed in a position of damage control only worsens things.
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Until someone stands up to the bully, the bully will keep bullying.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
I feel like this is the point where a lot of folks are losing the plot. It was actually not legal for him to acquire those cards. His supplier was not legally authorized to sell them at the time that they did. Oldschoolmtg was in possession of legally stolen goods. It's much more likely that the litigation will involve the supplier who violated contract and copyright and has more to lose than the third party (unless collusion can be established) but none of this stuff is legal. It sure feels like it should be legal, right? It's just a mistake and so on? There's leaks all the time and it's mostly just building hype, right? No, that is just not how law works.
Don't get me wrong, violating the law is fun and can be pretty profitable and I won't judge anyone for doing it alone, but it's a mistake to assume that just because something seems morally ok that it's legally ok. It's illegal to feed homeless people in a lot of places here, doesn't mean you shouldn't.
Reproducing wotc's intellectual property (here the card art and the written text) without their permission or license to do so is in fact illegal, which is why DMCA takedowns work.
Yes, they are a publically traded business in a capitalist economic system. They have a specifically declared fiduciary duty to their shareholders to maximize profit. Their shareholders could sue them if they did not explicitly pursue the maximum shareholder value.
It sucks, right? It sure would be better if we existed in an economic system where companies had a fiduciary duty directly to the communities in which they exist, or to the people as a whole.
Can you provide the legal statute or a link to it? I legitimately want to know. I would think the supplier to OldSchool broke the "sell by" agreement with WotC/Hasbro. That does not make it stolen goods. They were more than likely paid for those cards by the Supplier. Supplier broke an "embargo" or "sell by" date with a company. I believe this is a matter for civil courts, but again I am no law expert by any means.
So Distributor/Seller had a "breach of contract" with WotC/Hasbro by either selling them to soon by purpose or accident. Goods are not stolen that are legally paid for under contract. Goods can be released before a sell by date and that would be breach of contract, a civil matter. I believe, again, no expert here.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
That's an excellent idea.
...
If the goal is to make other youtubers follow in his footsteps in order to become a previews partner...
Otherwise buffntuff said what I wanted to say as well. Can you legally buy a product that was illegally sold?
Also, love that Wizard's statement reveals that they actually tried to reach him via phone several times before they sent the pinkertons. "Couldn't they have tried exploring other methods first." Everyone said. Turns out they did. It's almost as if WotC and Hasbro (I assume they coordinated on this) is a company and its in their own best interest to solve this issue without a potential PR disaster and spending money on the pinkertons.
Occam's Razor was right after all, who woulda thunk.
For real, sending goons to someone's house seems harsh to people, but it's an incredible act of deterrence for these acts in the future if people leaking future sets know the pinkies could be breathing down their necks.
Honestly, from what I've seen, people are more mad that they gave the pinkertons business than how they treated Oldschoolmtg. Hiring thugs is one thing, but hiring anti-union thugs triggers people on reddit like you wouldn't believe.
There's your answer there. Obviously I don't have the contract in front of me but generally the way they're written is that the cards are sold with the express presumption that wotc continues to own the IP rights to the cards and suppliers are merely licensing said material until such time as they're per contract available to be sold. Selling them outside the bounds of the contract would be a theft by conversion. It would probably go to civil court, but it's not because it isn't illegal more so because the state doesn't have a well defined interest here. Sometimes it does go to criminal court if it's egregious enough.
You know the funniest thing about all this is that the pinkertons went bankrupt back in the 90s and securitas security services bought up their branding and operates whats now known as the pinkertons. These are technically a totally different set of union busters.
Who is to say OSM didn't see missed calls from an unknown or spam risk number and ignore them, over the span of 15 minutes? This all occurred within barely a week. We have the whole set now, all 50 cards of it, and people are still bemoaning that it revealed nothing, lore-wise.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
It's a Catch-22 where If writers decide to go "woke" then that leads to AI cleaning up the mess causing people to lose their jobs where even If they don't the threat of AI will continue to pressure them out of their current jobs. The current state of the Japanese Anime / Manga Industry is also in a similar predicament as the writers in Hollywood affected by the current Writers Strike potentially losing their jobs to AI but for different reasons. Japan seems to be looking into AI to make up for the current stagnation of the Anime / Manga Industry which is very dangerous IMO.
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
mobwriters get you. They're coming for your industry. OooooOOOooooo.It will start happening way more often if people figure out there's something to gain from it.
Also, you're assuming this was a genuine mistake. Hah.
The reason there's a writers strike right now is because the WGA contract ended may 1st and negotiations over a new contract broke down. The reason the negotiations broke down is because WGA is angling to get writers to be paid residuals from streaming services the same way they used to be paid residuals on broadcast. Streaming services don't wanna pay that money because they've been getting real used to running shows on the cheap and lowballing everyone except the big name actors who have to angle themselves into being executive producers of every show just to get paid.
The current whole marketing push for these GPT powered textual AI programs started just a few months ago well into the contract negotiations time for WGA, and GPTs are very much not yet capable of putting together coherent movie or TV scripts without someone else at the wheel to edit the output into usable stuff.
The magic the gathering plot is pretty messy, but this has more to do with corporate timelines and interference with creative than it does the creative team itself. When the mandate on high is to produce something like seven sets a year and come up with big event sets every other year and a constantly changing status quo in terms of the characters and their abilities, you end up with a lot of rushed first drafts getting pushed in production because there's zero time for rewrites. If you remember the heyday of sets that came out with entire novels that was also a time when blocks were three sets long and all took place in a single plane with a 3 sets and one core set release schedule, meaning you were gonna spend an entire year in one place instead of what feels like about 2 months. Using AI to slap together plots isn't going to solve this sort of fundamental problem with the creative side of magic.
I think the only exception to a normal leak here is that it was put up on a fairly popular youtuber's main feed with himself listed as the source of the leaks, rather than a burner posting it on mtg reddit or imgur. If he had put up even the mildest of facade and pretended that he got these images from some rando behind seven proxies on imgur and he's merely reporting on a possible leak then literally none of this would have happened.
Used in the pejorative sense, it never meant anything to begin with. Some people have a very vested interest in demonizing the concept of basic human decency, and "politically correct" was starting to lose its punch, so they started popularizing a new term.
And to keep things on-topic, hiring PMC's to cover up your mistakes is some serious Shadowrun Megacorp bulls**t. It's like Hasbro is begging me to never give them any more money. I don't care what the specifics were, I don't care what he did or didn't do - even if he'd broken into Wizards HQ and swiped those packs Mission Impossible style, corporate use of PMC's is never, ever, ever justified.
why is aftermath so bad? besides some of the cards being off on revealing whats happened after mom like Tranquil Frillback
Also was it expected to be modern horizons powerful or something? Because they literally said its a standard legal. Or is it another one of those petitions to stop making products disgusied as commander products and focus on the other formats.
"Woke" at this point just means "people with empathy" for those on the right side of the political spectrum. After that it means nothing.
Given Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro's strict release schedule for Paper Magic, I could even argue that Aftermath was rushed into production and had no time to add more cards to the set before release to where the Expected Value (EV) would've been no where near as bad as it is right now. You can't really make this comparison to other small Standard sets like Fallen Empires and Homelands in the past unless there was overprinted product for Paper Magic LONG before Hasbro bought out Wizards of the Coast back in the late 90's. I highly doubt this was the case unless you go all the way back to when Chronicles almost killed Paper Magic and resulted in the creation of the Reserve List nearly 30 years ago because collectors didn't want to lose money. There is a big concern with the company lowering the amount of cards printed in new Standard sets to screw over LGSs by lowering their EV.
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
That's also not bringing up the story, which this set was supposed to set up, doesn't exist. The best this has is two parents died, planeswalkers lost their sparks (but not all of them did, some lost them in different ways, and the multiverse randomly put one woman's spark in a box for some reason), and a gay couple made a clockwork dinosaur. That's it. This "story that will push magic into its next era" has next to no story in it. This is especially true where they have random limited cards in this undraftable set for no reason, they have no value, don't even go into Commander decks, and tell even less story than Training Grounds.
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta