[Ed. - A few disclaimers and comments: 1) the company I work for does not sell melons; 2) I made up the name Joe's Grocery; 3) I am not, in any way, saying that I have ever heard or seen Sean Smallman or Warren Holland use profanity, I was simply making up a scenario to demonstrate what I would do in such situations; 4) if you have a problem with the "F-word," watch out for the ninth paragraph.; 5) if you get bored with the Ozy stuff, skip down to the bottom of the article, because I have some questions of my own about this incident]
I have engaged in my share of hurling criticisms at Decipher - I'm the first to admit that. Sometimes I even wonder if I've gone too far - after all, behind the hip corporate name, "Decipher," is a bunch of people who go to work and look forward to their paychecks just like me. I'm sure they aren't pleased that some chick over a thousand miles away uses her free time to critique everything from their art work to their marketing practices to their punctuation. As a company that deals with consumers, Decipher is a fair target for consumers' criticisms, but almog with the criticisms, I also *try* avoid demonizing the entire company based on a single incident or on the skewed perspective of them that I have...sometimes I'm successful and sometimes I get so caught up in what I'm annoyed about that I loose *perspective*. And so, it is in recognizing my own potential for losing perspective that I say I think Ozymandias has completely lost all suggestion of perspective when it comes to Decipher, Inc. He has crossed over the city limits of Irrationalville and is rapidly succeeding in his campaign for mayor.
This morning, I had just finished watering the plants in my office and was waiting for a secretary to let me know when one of our corporate officers was ready for a meeting when I decided to take a second to peruse the BBS. After scanning through the early morning posts, I noticed that Ozymandias' SW:CCG site Star Wars for Guys Who Like Star Wars had been updated. Since the secretary still hadn't called about the meeting, I hopped on over to his site to see what he'd posted.
As part of his daily update, Ozy posted a mini tirade about how Decipher was intentionally trying to "blackball" the Edge-Man, a Dallas-based retailer and wholesaler of collectibles, including CCGs. He posted the full text version of a May 27 article published in Beckett Insider that described Edgeman's complaint against Decipher, Inc. alleging "unfair business practices." He also attempted to draw parallels between Decipher's alleged treatment of the Edge-Man and Decipher's actions (or non-action as the case may be) toward him. Here are his comments as they appeared:
"I find it shocking that Decipher would behave in this manner. I guess Ozymandias isn't the only one Decipher is trying to blackball. Speaking of which, Decipher has apparently decided to ignore me and hope that I will go away. Nothing could be further from the truth. They have not responded to my numerous e-mail messages. I have attempted to contact anyone that will give me a straight answer. They have also refused my phone calls. I don't ask for much but a simple, "Hell no, just go away!" would suffice. Pretending that I don't exist is infuriating. There is trouble a-brewin' boys and girls. Stay tuned 'cause when Ozy goes off, nothing will be off-limits. There are a LOT of aces up my sleeve. "We have only begun to fight!"'
Now let me give you a short summary of what the article said. Apparently, The Edge-Man applied to Decipher to become a sub-distributor of Decipher CCGs, but the application was denied. In addition, The Edge-Man claims that Decipher told its distributors not to "engage in business practices with The Edge-Man, or they would risk no longer being a Decipher distributor themselves. The Edge-Man maintains that they met every condition necessary to become a sub-distributor, but Decipher still turned them down. Decipher's lawyer discussed a few of Decipher's policies regarding distributors, but declined to comment on any individual business and reiterated that Decipher is not required to do business with anyone. The Edge-Man's lawyer said that if Decipher does not reconsider its decision in 30 days, legal action will be taken.
Let's take first thing first. When I read the copy of the article that Ozy had posted on his site, he put a notice on the page saying that the article was appearing exactly the way it had in Beckett Insider. That would have been wonderful had he not used an enormous font to title the page "Edgeman Sues Decipher." Funny, the actual title of the article (which appears in a much smaller font further down the page) is "Wholesaler may take action against Decipher." After several readings of the article, I can find no mention of an actual lawsuit having been filed. Granted, the article does say that The Edge-Man intends to take legal action, but in the legal world, a lot can happen in 30 days. Ozy took it upon himself to put a not-quite-factual spin on the story to serve his own purposes.
Let's look at this from another angle (a VERY hypothetical angle...this is NOT a problem that my company has at the moment). I work for a company that sells branded produce (that's fresh fruits and vegetables sold with a named label like Dole or Sunkist or DANDY for those of you who didn't know). Let's just say that Joe's Grocery wants us to let their stores sell our produce, but for some reason, we don't want to let them sell our stuff. Maybe we don't like the condition of the produce departments at Joe's Grocery. Maybe their transportation or computer system is a bit old and it would be difficult for us to work with them. Maybe the store has business practices that we disagree with. Maybe their purchasing agent was rude to our sales agent and we decided they weren't worth the headache. Should we still have to let them sell our product?...hell no. It's our product, and we choose who gets to handle it. We could let our produce rot in the field rather than let Joe's Grocery sell our stuff in their stores. Now, what if we are talking about watermelons, and my company is the only company in this region with watermelons for sale. We've already told Joe's that they can't have our melons (and we had good reasons for that decision regardless of whether or not we chose to give them to anyone), so now we tell the stores we do sell to that we don't want them selling our melons to Joe's. Furthermore, if we find out they sold our melons to Joe's even after we asked them not to, they won't be getting any more melons either. I have a sneaky suspicion that Joe's Grocery will have a big special on pineapple, because they won't be getting any melons from us or from our customers.
Do you see my point? There are likely dozens of reason why Decipher may have decided to remove The Edge-Man from its list of businesses that it works with. Geez, it's possible that Decipher had so many people selling its stuff that it doesn't need another. It's remarkably presumptuous of Ozy to condemn Decipher without a solid knowledge of the facts. Ozy says he's shocked, but he doesn't even know the whole story. Hell, there could be even more stuff to be shocked about, but he has no freakin' clue.
I am also amused by Ozy's self-indulgent raging about Decipher's refusal to respond to his mail or messages. Regardless of whether or not he was wrong for posting the EJP spoilers and the playtester listserv, Ozy obliterated his relationship with the company. He proved beyond any doubt that he isn't to be trusted. So why on earth would Decipher want anymore to do with him? Imagine this...Sean Smallman is sitting at his desk weeding through 3,000 e-mail messages from players wanting to know about their ratings when the switchboard buzzes him: "Sean, that guy who hates our company and publicly disseminated our intellectual property over the Internet is on line two." What would you do? Rather than pick up and vent or say what he's really thinking or even pretending to be civil, I think the better option is to calmly say "Hang up on the fucker."
I have to wonder what Ozy thinks he's accomplishing with his not-so-subtle threats toward Decipher? Did he think that would get him a dinner invite from Carol Wisely? Did he think Warren Holland would suddenly say "Damn, this kid's must have something on us, fly him up here and see what he wants."? I don't think so. In fact, I be willing to bet that the legal department has quietly instructed all Decipher employees to avoid any and all contact with Ozy, but to keep a record of all his attempts to contact the company. It all seems so silly really. I've met Ozy in person, and I know how much he enjoys playing SW:CCG. I have no idea why he would want to further damage the company that makes the game. Perhaps this is one of those male, testosterone things that I simply can't understand because I have breasts. Perhaps it's one of those universally stupid things that no one gets.
Now, I'm pretty much done with the whole Ozy thing. But I did want to point out something that was in the article that you guys might be interested in. read this:
"Irwin [Decipher's lawyer] says his company has a policy in place that prohibits sale of its products via the Internet because Decipher desires to sell to the retail establishments. It is the storefronts, according to Irwin, that is the source of the energy behind the success of collectible card games. 'The retail storefront is essentially a clubhouse,' he says. 'There are a lot of games and contests held in the stores, and that is what we want to continue to develop'."
Does this mean that Decipher is clamping down on Internet distributors? Does this mean that I'm going to have to be at the mercy of the local hobby shop that sells 30-pack boxes at the low-low price of $90...no discussion? I understand that they want us to support the local retailer, but I don't think that I could afford to be competitive in this game if I had to cough up full retail for every expansion. I wouldn't even invest the amount I usually spend with a mail-order distributor...it simply wouldn't be worth it. But remember that this is just conjecture - something that might be worth an email to someone at Decipher who knows the answer and is willing to give it. As things stand now, Potomac Distribution is still selling cards via the Internet...hope it stays that way until D*II.
At any rate, it will be interesting to see what comes of all of this. I don't know enough about anti-trust laws to give this the analysis it probably requires to fully understand the situation. It's possible that The Edge-Man really does have a case that will have to be hashed out by lawyers and people who make in an hour what I make in a week. But what I do understand is that Ozy has taken advantage of this situation to figuratively put another flaming bag of dog crap on Decipher's doorstep and he signed the card on the bag "Hugs and kisses, Ozy."
Queen Jawa