TL;DR: Being nice has worked in the past; to wit, it's the
only thing that's ever worked. Fizzer is not a fundamentally bad or greedy person. We do not understand him well and are probably wrong about many judgements. I think we have something good going right now with the petition effort and I'd really like to try that first.
As someone with little respect for the guy, I feel those are unfair & unproductive judgements. If he were simply lucre-motivated, he would not have made this game.
He may have done some things you & I find reprehensible, but people are complex and the vast majority of bad things are done by mostly-decent people for what they believe are good reasons. There are clearly things he cares about and ways in which he's demonstrated kindness, patience, & conscientiousness. We're all mixed bags, right? Just think about how others would judge you if they only fixated on your worst or your best parts, with limited knowledge of what really makes you tick.
Plus if your theory of Fizzer is true, then we have already largely lost. Let's play the winnable game first.
Stop being delusional, acting nice will not make Fizzer change
I can attest this isn't always true. The Create Game API accepts a "settings" parameter because I simply asked nicely over email- he implemented that feature the same day I asked! He also sent me a lenghty, heartfelt apology once in 2017 or so after (apparently) saying bad things about me on his Twitch stream (which I didn't view and can't speak to). My opinion of the man was for the longest time one that held him in the highest esteem. He's done lots of very nice things!
Anyhow, I'm hoping you can cut him some slack. What you said earlier about "health problems" rubbed me the wrong way; if he is struggling with health, I
hope he absolutely prioritizes that over any perceived obligations to us. I hope we presumptively extend sympathy in case he is. (I suspect some will perceive this as hypocritical, given my persistent & harsh criticism of him, but like I said earlier, we're mixed bags and outside observers often jump to wildly incorrect assumptions about motivations, then confirmation-bias ourselves into perpetuating those and becoming increasingly wrong.)
you need to convince it that it's in his best monetary interest
I do not think $ is his core motivation. I suspect he is instead motivated by some vision of what he wants to do with his time & life. I doubt we have figured this out.
Anyhow, we don't really need to. There are members of the community who have become his personal friends and can have extended conversations with him. If we can draft a clear, concise, copacetic petition and recruit someone he trusts/respects/listens to, to present it and advocate for it on our behalf, then I think we have strong odds of success. It's about cutting through the noise and getting someone who has a better working relationship with him to help us out. I have some candidates in mind, but unfortunately I've burned my own bridges with them so it might take a little bit of time to get that piece in place.
He is the same person who filed a frivolous lawsuit against Activision and then lied to community that Activision were the ones suing him
In case you arrived to this half-wrong conclusion based on my updates, let me correct the record.
Activision did sue Fizzer- but for a declaration of non-infringement. Warlight, on the other hand, persistently claimed Activision was infringing on their "warzone" mark and demanded $ over it- both by sending a cease & desist and in their now-dismissed countersuit. Please also do not just take my word for things; my own relationship with Fizzer has completely deteriorated after some adverse interactions in 2020 and 2021, so my description of his actions are likely colored by strong prior beliefs I have formed about his personality & character. Also he worked at Microsoft and as someone who has interviewed with them, I also have a strong prior against anyone who has ever worked there; one of my core beliefs is that Microsoft's hiring bar is lower than a pub at the center of the Earth. I'm biased!
So don't just take my word for anything. Many of the documents are public and you can read them yourself:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fvqiprIa_0wIQCDUBdEeyiXXxBUKeV1e/view?usp=sharingIn short, I believe he willingly and deliberately misled the community about the facts and stakes in order to push a sympathetic narrative and raise funds by wildly mischaracterizing the lawsuit as a fight over whether this game can continue calling itself "warzone." But it's tricky to communicate this concisely without confusing people about the case.
The rough timeline is:
(1) Activision files for trademark registrations in the US & EU to "CALL OF DUTY WARZONE" and "WARZONE"
(2) Warzone counter-files in the US for "WARZONE" and files opposition to Activision's US trademark registrations, claiming Activision is instead infringing on Warzone's common law trademark to the word "warzone"
(3) Warzone sends Activision a cease-and-desist letter on November 20, 2020, alleging trademark infringement and demanding Activision cease using the word "warzone," pay Warzone for using it (initial ask: 0.25% of CoDWZ profits), or get forced to pay "massive damages" by the courts
(4) After failing to come to an agreement, Activision sues Warzone in April 2021
for a declaration of non-infringement and to decide the trademark dispute in their favor.
(5) Warzone countersues Activision for trademark infringement, demanding the court either stop Activision from using the word "warzone" and/or make Activision pay Warzone money for using it.
(6) The court rules, without a trial, that Activision is
not infringing on Warzone's alleged mark to the word "warzone," that Warzone's infringement claims have no legal merit. The court does not rule on the competing trademark registrations.
(7) Warzone appeals the decision.
My objections (in terms of dishonesty and manipulation) were to the following misrepresentations:
(1) When fundraising, Fizzer repeatedly claimed that Activision was simply lying about the cease and desist letter. He later claimed (to the courts and to Farah) that a letter was sent but it was not a cease and desist. Though not public, this letter was submitted to the courts, which simply described the letter as a cease and desist.
(2) When fundraising, Fizzer claimed Activision is suing Fizzer for using the word "warzone" in his game's name. This is exactly backwards: the only party in this case to claim infringement or demand $ for using the word "warzone" was Fizzer. Activision's legal theory, upheld by the courts, precludes an infringement claim against Warzone, as do decades of legal precedent.
(3) When fundraising, Fizzer manufactured a scenario where this game gets its apps taken down or gets forced to change its name. As a good faith prior user, Warzone is protected even if Activision succeeds in its trademark registrations. Activision's own First Amendment-based legal theory, upheld by the district judge, also precludes going after Warzone over infringement. Fizzer cites the time Hasbro got his apps taken down temporarily over "Play Risk Online Free," but this
was a case of legitimate trademark infringement through consumer confusion- trademark infringement on which this game built its playerbase. At this moment, Activision already holds the trademark to "warzone" in the EU- yet they have not taken the apps down, because doing so would be legally baseless & they probably do not care in general.
I strongly suspect that most donors donated based on the above misrepresentations. Insofar as that is true, I hope he can understand the degree to which he took advantage of the community's goodwill and make amends. However, I suspect this will never happen because his strategy for fundraising has been rather successful and morally he probably feels he is in the right to do what he's doing after getting surprised by a big company using the word he'd hoped to build his own gaming brand on (in both foresight and hindsight,
quite foolishly and after repeated prophetic warnings by the community).
Edited 9/23/2022 23:49:34
