In light of all your poor social interfacing lately, one would think you guys would have hired a company that wasn't the one who murdered union organizers and helped turn the Civil War into a years-long slog by telling MacClellan the South had a million man army ready to invade Washington DC at a moments notice. It's like you're trying to look like a bunch of thugs.
Someone recently obtained a box of Magic cards they should not have. Those cards were Wizards’ property - and even though they likely were not stolen, Wizards did have an interest in getting the cards back. The person who ended up with the cards fully knew they should not have them, and leaked all the cards anyway. In doing so, they hurt Wizards of the Coast (who is trying to slow down the rate of spoiler season), players who complained about constant back to back spoilers, the folks who normally would spoil cards and use those spoilers to draw attention to their platforms, etc.
Wizards allegedly hired a national private investigation firm to go ask for the property back. That is fairly standard procedure - when you have something go missing, you can hire a private eye to track it down, and if they could be anywhere in the country, you hire a national firm. Now, it just so happens that firm did some pretty evil stuff a century ago (or, let’s be honest, Wizards’ player base is probably more upset they hired bad guys from BioShock and Red Dead than they are about history), but that doesn’t change the actual reality that the Pinkertons in the modern world are probably the best name in the business and the one a company is likely to turn to for this kind of recovery.
There’s really nothing to see here - the story is really just “someone at a third-party packaging plant messed something up with Wizards’ property, someone else sought to take advantage of the mess up to improve their own image at the expense of countless others, Wizards hired a private investigator firm with national reach to get their stuff back.”
The person who leaked the card said that the actual Wizard representative they talked to was completely reasonable and understanding. The Pinkertons did make his wife cry, however the person was not mad at Wizards.
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DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
You mean, aside from bullying the guy's wife and making her cry? The Pinkertons are still thugs. There are plenty of companies that could have been hired to do this. Hell, the idea that they had to hire *anybody* to go bully the guy to get them back is ridiculous. Wizards could have contacted him themselves but decided for some reason that they had to hire people with guns to go get them back without contacting him at all was a good idea. Bad optics is just bad optics. They seem to have an obsession with making themselves look like ********. There is no *allegedly* about it. They absolutely did this.
You mean, aside from bullying the guy's wife and making her cry? The Pinkertons are still thugs. There are plenty of companies that could have been hired to do this. Hell, the idea that they had to hire *anybody* to go bully the guy to get them back is ridiculous. Wizards could have contacted him themselves but decided for some reason that they had to hire people with guns to go get them back without contacting him at all was a good idea. Bad optics is just bad optics. They seem to have an obsession with making themselves look like ********. There is no *allegedly* about it. They absolutely did this.
The dude's own video when the seizure or recovery first happened describes the encounter as shocking but reasonable. It's not clear whether Kotaku took liberties with that story or the YouTuber's story has changed. The latter is entirely possible because a lot of P.I.'s involved in asset recovery do come with a gift for gab that seems like, for the sake of this forum and at the risk of being too glib, they can innately cast charm person at will. And while the conversation may have seemed entirely on the up and up, feelings of bamboozledness are likely to follow.
My guess is Pinkertons were not private sector equivalent 911'd to simply shake down the YouTuber. Rather, I'm guessing WotC/Hasbro in light of numerous leaks in terms of product and internal documents related to MtG and D&D had already retained Pinkerton to do a broad review of WotC operations and procedures covering everything from document controls and insider vulnerabilities to vulnerabilities in its supply chain and distribution controls for both diversion and simple spillage. When the video went viral, Pinkerton was already working with WotC and offered to recover WotC's assets. I'm guessing in this instance it was not malice or willful shenanigans, but rather faults in production and distribution channels that led to these cards getting into public hands in the first place. On top of a lot of "yeah, we messed up" public communications, WotC also likely has to answer to Hasbro "why these messes keep happening?" And getting to the bottom of that is arguably what companies like Pinkerton do these days.
Is it heavy handed and smells of an effort to "police" MtG fandom by making an example out of a YouTuber? Sure, but I think people are missing what might actually be going on while joining the peeing on the Pinkerton name pile on.
There’s really nothing to see here - the story is really just “someone at a third-party packaging plant messed something up with Wizards’ property, someone else sought to take advantage of the mess up to improve their own image at the expense of countless others, Wizards hired a private investigator firm with national reach to get their stuff back.”
While I think I agree with your take on the bigger picture, I'd take issue with this simple conclusion. Yes you're right in the story of "big business" this is all that happened. Nevertheless, there was a human impact, someone sounds pretty shaken in his video, and reports his wife was moved to tears over being "In trouble."
There's a lot we don't know. Were these folks gentlemen in suits or polo shirts, or tactically kitted up (in some states private security contractors can in fact show up looking like SWAT teams to the lay observer)? At the end of the day this is a confluence of big business intersecting with a human interest story, and that's why it's news.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Under U.S. Law, so long as the property is not stolen, it belongs to the receiver. If you are accidently sent something, such as an unreleased box set of Magic the Gathering cards due to a packaging error at the distributor, you are the legal owner of that something. The only party that WotC has any legal ammunition against is the distributor (assuming the YouTuber is telling the truth that package was sent accidently in place of his actual order, and he did not obtain it via other means).
WotC could have asked him to take down the video. They could have asked him to return the cards and offer compensation for them. They sent a detective agency with a history of union-busting, intimidation, and murder-for-hire, however above-board they might be today, to STEAL the cards and all evidence of him having had the cards in his possession while demanding he take down the video of the cards.
They have just shot themselves in their good foot, because I guess they wanted to match the foot they shot in December?
Under U.S. Law, so long as the property is not stolen, it belongs to the receiver. If you are accidently sent something, such as an unreleased box set of Magic the Gathering cards due to a packaging error at the distributor, you are the legal owner of that something. The only party that WotC has any legal ammunition against is the distributor (assuming the YouTuber is telling the truth that package was sent accidently in place of his actual order, and he did not obtain it via other means).
WotC could have asked him to take down the video. They could have asked him to return the cards and offer compensation for them. They sent a detective agency with a history of union-busting, intimidation, and murder-for-hire, however above-board they might be today, to STEAL the cards and all evidence of him having had the cards in his possession while demanding he take down the video of the cards.
They have just shot themselves in their good foot, because I guess they wanted to match the foot they shot in December?
This, unless he stole the product or was purchasing stolen goods at that point it was his. And no, accidentally released early goods is not stolen goods. They sent a agency with a history of being pure evil to intimidate him.
Under U.S. Law, so long as the property is not stolen, it belongs to the receiver. If you are accidently sent something, such as an unreleased box set of Magic the Gathering cards due to a packaging error at the distributor, you are the legal owner of that something. The only party that WotC has any legal ammunition against is the distributor (assuming the YouTuber is telling the truth that package was sent accidently in place of his actual order, and he did not obtain it via other means).
WotC could have asked him to take down the video. They could have asked him to return the cards and offer compensation for them. They sent a detective agency with a history of union-busting, intimidation, and murder-for-hire, however above-board they might be today, to STEAL the cards and all evidence of him having had the cards in his possession while demanding he take down the video of the cards.
They have just shot themselves in their good foot, because I guess they wanted to match the foot they shot in December?
This, unless he stole the product or was purchasing stolen goods at that point it was his. And no, accidentally released early goods is not stolen goods. They sent a agency with a history of being pure evil to intimidate him.
"Unless he stole the product or was purchasing stolen goods" is the sticking point. The dude's own videos claim he gets his cards from "his guy" ... which opens the possibility that the YouTubers supplier isn't a legitimate vendor (global supply chain has produced this phenomenon where factories can produce print runs of in this case cards ... cards that never wind up in official inventory, but instead in a black/grey market ... Homeland Security actually has a whole division or had a whole division as of a few years ago that tried to get to crack down on this practice, it's pretty much affected every product/goods sector except cars and aircraft). As I've suggested, it's really unlikely WotC retained Pinkerton to simply shake down a single YouTuber. They may be looking into diversion of product into black/grey market territory where the "it wasn't theft" claim starts to falter. It's all hard to say with any certainty anything at this point in time, other than this isn't about PR, or a single YouTuber, but the paranoid measures modern corporations feel they have to do for "security" in the marketplace. And on that level, it's actually kind of funny. Even the YouTuber seems to have some humor about it when he's venting over the embarrassment he's expressed over the P.I.'s evidently canvassing his neighborhood.
My guess is the YouTuber will let WotC make him whole with an "legal" cards of comparable value. I don't see the cost of the cards worth suing over, and damages beyond that ... the guy's followers on YouTube doubled over night. Unless his employment or some such suffers, or he or his spouse want to go through the whole psych evaluation to prove traumitazaton and bring it in front of a jury, I don't see much happening on that front.
I know Pinkerton is a naughty word for many, but honestly this conduct was pretty low key compared to some of the excesses corporate security outfits have gotten up to. Look into the threat mitigation unit eBay recently dismantled. Some of them are doing actual jail time.
There’s really nothing to see here - the story is really just “someone at a third-party packaging plant messed something up with Wizards’ property, someone else sought to take advantage of the mess up to improve their own image at the expense of countless others, Wizards hired a private investigator firm with national reach to get their stuff back.”
this is a deeply unhinged take
the pinkertons aren't just some pi firm, they are some of the most notorious corporate murderers in u.s. history and wizards sent them to a dude's house bc *they* screwed up their packaging and distribution
There’s really nothing to see here - the story is really just “someone at a third-party packaging plant messed something up with Wizards’ property, someone else sought to take advantage of the mess up to improve their own image at the expense of countless others, Wizards hired a private investigator firm with national reach to get their stuff back.”
this is a deeply unhinged take
the pinkertons aren't just some pi firm, they are some of the most notorious corporate murderers in u.s. history and wizards sent them to a dude's house bc *they* screwed up their packaging and distribution
It wasn't actually Wizards' fault, it was the non Magic playing distributor who messed up. Wizards didn't actually know how the poster got the cards at the time.
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DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
I'm beginning to think WotC has lost it's damn mind...
I'm not sure what was going through the head of the person that hired the Pinkerton agency, or what was going through the heads of their agents who showed up at a Youtuber's home threatening arrest and legal action, but there are a million other ways this could have been solved.
Come watch us save the multiverse in "The Lost Dragons of Phandelver" - a homebrew based on Lost Mines of Phandelver, Dragon of Icespire Peak, and They Tyranny of Dragons. https://www.twitch.tv/kdinla The Gatewalker Saga - Dragons Beware
There’s really nothing to see here - the story is really just “someone at a third-party packaging plant messed something up with Wizards’ property, someone else sought to take advantage of the mess up to improve their own image at the expense of countless others, Wizards hired a private investigator firm with national reach to get their stuff back.”
this is a deeply unhinged take
the pinkertons aren't just some pi firm, they are some of the most notorious corporate murderers in u.s. history and wizards sent them to a dude's house bc *they* screwed up their packaging and distribution
It wasn't actually Wizards' fault, it was the non Magic playing distributor who messed up. Wizards didn't actually know how the poster got the cards at the time.
Fair enough, that makes things slightly better, I misunderstood exactly where the mixup happened. Still, Pinkertons are a huge red flag here. A wild choice for a company to make in this day and age.
Someone recently obtained a box of Magic cards they should not have. Those cards were Wizards’ property - and even though they likely were not stolen, Wizards did have an interest in getting the cards back. The person who ended up with the cards fully knew they should not have them, and leaked all the cards anyway. In doing so, they hurt Wizards of the Coast (who is trying to slow down the rate of spoiler season), players who complained about constant back to back spoilers, the folks who normally would spoil cards and use those spoilers to draw attention to their platforms, etc.
Wizards allegedly hired a national private investigation firm to go ask for the property back. That is fairly standard procedure - when you have something go missing, you can hire a private eye to track it down, and if they could be anywhere in the country, you hire a national firm. Now, it just so happens that firm did some pretty evil stuff a century ago (or, let’s be honest, Wizards’ player base is probably more upset they hired bad guys from BioShock and Red Dead than they are about history), but that doesn’t change the actual reality that the Pinkertons in the modern world are probably the best name in the business and the one a company is likely to turn to for this kind of recovery.
There’s really nothing to see here - the story is really just “someone at a third-party packaging plant messed something up with Wizards’ property, someone else sought to take advantage of the mess up to improve their own image at the expense of countless others, Wizards hired a private investigator firm with national reach to get their stuff back.”
You missed the parts where they illegally without jurisdiction entered someone's home and raided it without a warrant from the local law authority.
Regardless of which, I'll be looking forward to seeing Wizards and Hasbro publicly apologising for this and reviewing how this incident (of hiring private military contractors) instead of going through a legal route with actual law enforcement agencies and financially compensating the individual they lead Pinkerton to raid. Failing that, I'll reconsider what game I will be playing in the future and changing our sourcebook plans to not be for D&D5e or ONED&D.
Seriously, one more thing like the OGL or this and I am done with Wizards forever.
>The dude's own videos claim he gets his cards from "his guy" ... which opens the possibility that the YouTubers supplier isn't a legitimate vendor
None of this is true. You are lying to justify WotC sending Pinkertons to his door to threaten him with arrest when this was a shipping mistake. The Pinkertons knocked on neighbors doors and lied to *them* about what was going on. This is reprehensible behavior or the part of WotC and Pinkertons. As usual, they can't seem to avoid acting like thugs. Where Hasbro and WotC learned this behavior is beyond me, but it's showing that their corporate culture is as vile as it gets. A simple phone call would have solved this but they decided to go nuclear like a bunch of dipsticks.
>The dude's own videos claim he gets his cards from "his guy" ... which opens the possibility that the YouTubers supplier isn't a legitimate vendor
None of this is true. You are lying to justify WotC sending Pinkertons to his door to threaten him with arrest when this was a shipping mistake. The Pinkertons knocked on neighbors doors and lied to *them* about what was going on. This is reprehensible behavior or the part of WotC and Pinkertons. As usual, they can't seem to avoid acting like thugs. Where Hasbro and WotC learned this behavior is beyond me, but it's showing that their corporate culture is as vile as it gets. A simple phone call would have solved this but they decided to go nuclear like a bunch of dipsticks.
WotC did call, but he didn't pick up as it was an unlisted number.
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DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
In light of all your poor social interfacing lately, one would think you guys would have hired a company that wasn't the one who murdered union organizers and helped turn the Civil War into a years-long slog by telling MacClellan the South had a million man army ready to invade Washington DC at a moments notice. It's like you're trying to look like a bunch of thugs.
wut
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https://gizmodo.com/magic-march-of-the-machine-aftermath-leak-pinkertons-1850369015
https://www.thegamer.com/mtg-march-of-the-machine-aftermath-leak-wotc-confiscated-cards/
A bit of google-searching, in case any of you are confused as to what OP is talking about.
Or, for people who are not going to read links:
Someone recently obtained a box of Magic cards they should not have. Those cards were Wizards’ property - and even though they likely were not stolen, Wizards did have an interest in getting the cards back. The person who ended up with the cards fully knew they should not have them, and leaked all the cards anyway. In doing so, they hurt Wizards of the Coast (who is trying to slow down the rate of spoiler season), players who complained about constant back to back spoilers, the folks who normally would spoil cards and use those spoilers to draw attention to their platforms, etc.
Wizards allegedly hired a national private investigation firm to go ask for the property back. That is fairly standard procedure - when you have something go missing, you can hire a private eye to track it down, and if they could be anywhere in the country, you hire a national firm. Now, it just so happens that firm did some pretty evil stuff a century ago (or, let’s be honest, Wizards’ player base is probably more upset they hired bad guys from BioShock and Red Dead than they are about history), but that doesn’t change the actual reality that the Pinkertons in the modern world are probably the best name in the business and the one a company is likely to turn to for this kind of recovery.
There’s really nothing to see here - the story is really just “someone at a third-party packaging plant messed something up with Wizards’ property, someone else sought to take advantage of the mess up to improve their own image at the expense of countless others, Wizards hired a private investigator firm with national reach to get their stuff back.”
The person who leaked the card said that the actual Wizard representative they talked to was completely reasonable and understanding. The Pinkertons did make his wife cry, however the person was not mad at Wizards.
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
You mean, aside from bullying the guy's wife and making her cry? The Pinkertons are still thugs. There are plenty of companies that could have been hired to do this. Hell, the idea that they had to hire *anybody* to go bully the guy to get them back is ridiculous. Wizards could have contacted him themselves but decided for some reason that they had to hire people with guns to go get them back without contacting him at all was a good idea. Bad optics is just bad optics. They seem to have an obsession with making themselves look like ********. There is no *allegedly* about it. They absolutely did this.
The dude's own video when the seizure or recovery first happened describes the encounter as shocking but reasonable. It's not clear whether Kotaku took liberties with that story or the YouTuber's story has changed. The latter is entirely possible because a lot of P.I.'s involved in asset recovery do come with a gift for gab that seems like, for the sake of this forum and at the risk of being too glib, they can innately cast charm person at will. And while the conversation may have seemed entirely on the up and up, feelings of bamboozledness are likely to follow.
My guess is Pinkertons were not private sector equivalent 911'd to simply shake down the YouTuber. Rather, I'm guessing WotC/Hasbro in light of numerous leaks in terms of product and internal documents related to MtG and D&D had already retained Pinkerton to do a broad review of WotC operations and procedures covering everything from document controls and insider vulnerabilities to vulnerabilities in its supply chain and distribution controls for both diversion and simple spillage. When the video went viral, Pinkerton was already working with WotC and offered to recover WotC's assets. I'm guessing in this instance it was not malice or willful shenanigans, but rather faults in production and distribution channels that led to these cards getting into public hands in the first place. On top of a lot of "yeah, we messed up" public communications, WotC also likely has to answer to Hasbro "why these messes keep happening?" And getting to the bottom of that is arguably what companies like Pinkerton do these days.
Is it heavy handed and smells of an effort to "police" MtG fandom by making an example out of a YouTuber? Sure, but I think people are missing what might actually be going on while joining the peeing on the Pinkerton name pile on.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
While I think I agree with your take on the bigger picture, I'd take issue with this simple conclusion. Yes you're right in the story of "big business" this is all that happened. Nevertheless, there was a human impact, someone sounds pretty shaken in his video, and reports his wife was moved to tears over being "In trouble."
There's a lot we don't know. Were these folks gentlemen in suits or polo shirts, or tactically kitted up (in some states private security contractors can in fact show up looking like SWAT teams to the lay observer)? At the end of the day this is a confluence of big business intersecting with a human interest story, and that's why it's news.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Under U.S. Law, so long as the property is not stolen, it belongs to the receiver. If you are accidently sent something, such as an unreleased box set of Magic the Gathering cards due to a packaging error at the distributor, you are the legal owner of that something. The only party that WotC has any legal ammunition against is the distributor (assuming the YouTuber is telling the truth that package was sent accidently in place of his actual order, and he did not obtain it via other means).
WotC could have asked him to take down the video. They could have asked him to return the cards and offer compensation for them. They sent a detective agency with a history of union-busting, intimidation, and murder-for-hire, however above-board they might be today, to STEAL the cards and all evidence of him having had the cards in his possession while demanding he take down the video of the cards.
They have just shot themselves in their good foot, because I guess they wanted to match the foot they shot in December?
This, unless he stole the product or was purchasing stolen goods at that point it was his. And no, accidentally released early goods is not stolen goods. They sent a agency with a history of being pure evil to intimidate him.
"Unless he stole the product or was purchasing stolen goods" is the sticking point. The dude's own videos claim he gets his cards from "his guy" ... which opens the possibility that the YouTubers supplier isn't a legitimate vendor (global supply chain has produced this phenomenon where factories can produce print runs of in this case cards ... cards that never wind up in official inventory, but instead in a black/grey market ... Homeland Security actually has a whole division or had a whole division as of a few years ago that tried to get to crack down on this practice, it's pretty much affected every product/goods sector except cars and aircraft). As I've suggested, it's really unlikely WotC retained Pinkerton to simply shake down a single YouTuber. They may be looking into diversion of product into black/grey market territory where the "it wasn't theft" claim starts to falter. It's all hard to say with any certainty anything at this point in time, other than this isn't about PR, or a single YouTuber, but the paranoid measures modern corporations feel they have to do for "security" in the marketplace. And on that level, it's actually kind of funny. Even the YouTuber seems to have some humor about it when he's venting over the embarrassment he's expressed over the P.I.'s evidently canvassing his neighborhood.
My guess is the YouTuber will let WotC make him whole with an "legal" cards of comparable value. I don't see the cost of the cards worth suing over, and damages beyond that ... the guy's followers on YouTube doubled over night. Unless his employment or some such suffers, or he or his spouse want to go through the whole psych evaluation to prove traumitazaton and bring it in front of a jury, I don't see much happening on that front.
I know Pinkerton is a naughty word for many, but honestly this conduct was pretty low key compared to some of the excesses corporate security outfits have gotten up to. Look into the threat mitigation unit eBay recently dismantled. Some of them are doing actual jail time.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
this is a deeply unhinged take
the pinkertons aren't just some pi firm, they are some of the most notorious corporate murderers in u.s. history and wizards sent them to a dude's house bc *they* screwed up their packaging and distribution
It wasn't actually Wizards' fault, it was the non Magic playing distributor who messed up. Wizards didn't actually know how the poster got the cards at the time.
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
I'm beginning to think WotC has lost it's damn mind...
I'm not sure what was going through the head of the person that hired the Pinkerton agency, or what was going through the heads of their agents who showed up at a Youtuber's home threatening arrest and legal action, but there are a million other ways this could have been solved.
What the heck is going on at that company?
https://kotaku.com/mtg-aftermath-leaks-pinkertons-wotc-magic-the-gathering-1850368923?fbclid=IwAR12kDHnxzhwV9eHccweWmLD_fAbQBUVB
Come watch us save the multiverse in "The Lost Dragons of Phandelver" - a homebrew based on Lost Mines of Phandelver, Dragon of Icespire Peak, and They Tyranny of Dragons.
https://www.twitch.tv/kdinla
The Gatewalker Saga - Dragons Beware
Fair enough, that makes things slightly better, I misunderstood exactly where the mixup happened. Still, Pinkertons are a huge red flag here. A wild choice for a company to make in this day and age.
You missed the parts where they illegally without jurisdiction entered someone's home and raided it without a warrant from the local law authority.
Regardless of which, I'll be looking forward to seeing Wizards and Hasbro publicly apologising for this and reviewing how this incident (of hiring private military contractors) instead of going through a legal route with actual law enforcement agencies and financially compensating the individual they lead Pinkerton to raid. Failing that, I'll reconsider what game I will be playing in the future and changing our sourcebook plans to not be for D&D5e or ONED&D.
Seriously, one more thing like the OGL or this and I am done with Wizards forever.
>The dude's own videos claim he gets his cards from "his guy" ... which opens the possibility that the YouTubers supplier isn't a legitimate vendor
None of this is true. You are lying to justify WotC sending Pinkertons to his door to threaten him with arrest when this was a shipping mistake. The Pinkertons knocked on neighbors doors and lied to *them* about what was going on. This is reprehensible behavior or the part of WotC and Pinkertons. As usual, they can't seem to avoid acting like thugs. Where Hasbro and WotC learned this behavior is beyond me, but it's showing that their corporate culture is as vile as it gets. A simple phone call would have solved this but they decided to go nuclear like a bunch of dipsticks.
WotC did call, but he didn't pick up as it was an unlisted number.
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
I kind of hate Hasbro, Dnd already shit the bed and then this happens. This is a dystopian joke.