Hillside Games, Asheville: The Unfriendly Local Game Store

Morrus · Mar 1, 2012

Thanks for relaying this, @Sebastrd

Hillside Games said:
I appreciate your comments over email instead of my Facebook page. Allowing for more than a business day to deal with such matters is frequently necessary. As matters proceed forward please note that according to ICANN policy domain names can not be released for 60 days after registration. We are not ignoring the issue, I can assure you. However this barrage of attacks is serving to do nothing except inflame a situation that was actually going to be resolved quite peacefully before this all began had we been given more than 1 business day to respond to the initial message. The barrage of emails and Facebook messages I/we have received have been both threatening and harassing.

You however seem to be a competent and reasonable Individual. I am sure that my reply to you will be relayed back. If this barrage of attacks stops on our pages we will be able to enter into a proper discourse with the individual's that we actually need to talk with.

Hillside Games

What an interesting reply, though!

It takes more than one business day to respond?

No, it takes approximately 5 minutes to pick up the phone and apologize and offfer to hand over the domain names.

No offence, guys. You're a game store, not Hasbro. Amanda, have a quick chat with Nate if you really feel you have to, but it doesn't take much. It'll take less time than it took you to write that reply to Sebastrd, above - I don't think The Wyvern's Tale folks will want to hang on the phone and chat for an hour about the weather.

However this barrage of attacks is serving to do nothing except inflame a situation that was actually going to be resolved quite peacefully before this all began had we been given more than 1 business day to respond to the initial message.

This is remarkably disingenous. It wasn't going to be resolved peacefully until we all got involved. If it hadn't been reported in the news, nothing would have happened. Here's the timeline:

On 18 February 2012, Hillside Games, Inc. registered www.thewyvenrstale.com, .net, .org, .us, .mobi, .info.
-On 27 February 2012, The Wyvern's Tale LLC, through the medium of Facebook, announced that Hillside Games, Inc registered the aforementioned domain names on the aforementioned date. Let the record show that these announcements did contain some emotional language.
-On 28 February 2012, the Chief Financial Officer of Hillside Games, Inc. contacted the proprietors of The Wyvern's Tale LLC and demanded that all related posts be removed from Facebook and that The Wyvern's Tale LLC issue a public, written apology, lest they bring suit for libel.

So The Wyvern's Tale told us (as in the public) what happened 9 days after the event. Not one day, but nine days. And thenthe very next day, Hillside Gamesthreatened them with a lawsuit. So they had their "one business day", and they used it to threaten a frivolous lawsuit. If one day is enough time to threaten a lawsuit, it's enough time to pick up a phone and say sorry. It's now the 29th February, the day after their threat. What "message" are they waiting to respond to? They've responded. With a threat.
As for the "constant barrage of attacks" - here's a good rule of thumb; perhaps they could write it down somewhere so they don't forget:

If you don't want people to criticize you for doing bad things, don't do bad things.

The people criticizing you aren't the ones in the wrong. You don't get to blame them for your actions.

[Edit - I had a list of suggestions here for how to fix the situation, but it's really The Wyvern's Take's place to make those requests, not mine.]

Lwaxy · Mar 1, 2012

Indeed. It is a matter of principle. If our local store would pull anything like that I guess I'd only order online anymore.

catsclaw227 · Mar 1, 2012

Now I see that they have blocked all recommendations and made all the bad ones not public.

Why haven't they posted something on their wall about this to quell bad publicity. Asheville is a liberal, hip kind of town in Western NC, and I bet that local media would run something about this if they were pressed to.

News 13 - WLOS
News #: 800-288-2413
Email: comments@wlos.com
Feedback form: WLOS ABC13 :: Station Info

Asheville Citizen-Times:
Letter to the Editor: Submit a Letter to the Editor | The Asheville Citizen-Times | citizen-times.com
Business Section: http://www.citizen-times.com/section/business
Local News: Local News | The Asheville Citizen-Times | citizen-times.com

the Jester · Mar 1, 2012

Emailed the local news and sent them a link to this article/thread.

Dykstrav · Mar 1, 2012

I've actually been to Hillside Games... Once. When I was in Asheville for work last year, I stopped in there on a day off.

The person working the counter was pretty rude and we actually had some words about it. I almost returned my purchases, but decided to just not visit there again. I've heard mixed things about the store from some of my friends in Asheville, but never really worried too much about it--after all, it's not like Asheville is local for me. I don't really know the people at the store, but based on this and my own experience there, I'm not surprised at a move like this.

I can say this for sure, however: I'm going to the Wyvern's Tale when they open, on the first day if I can manage it, and I'm buying twice as much stuff there as I did at Hillside games.

MajPepper · Mar 1, 2012

reapersaurus said:
Maybe this has been mentioned before, but if you're trying to invoke a fantasy tavern, why not use the name Wyvern's Tavern?

Just to address that for a moment, we want to evoke the feel of the kind of tavern you might hear about in a fantasy game (And thus recognizable by gamers), but we don't want to actually use the term tavern, as that would definitely lead to people assuming we were a real tavern.

I'd like to once again thank everyone for their support. As a minor update, we have yet to hear anything since, and the only news I have is the above email from Hillside Games. They have not contacted us directly We are trying to minimize any liabilities, so we will be as unemotional as possible in our public statements. However, we'd like to point out the following things.

Yes, we goofed in not registering our domain early. We have learned our lesson. That does not make this practice ethical.

We did not give Hillside Games more than 1 "business" day before publicizing the information. However, the information was already public. Any one in the world with a connection to the internet can look up a WHOIS registry.

I cannot speak for the schedule of the management at Hillside Games. It may very well take them more than 1 business day to respond to an email. However, it takes approximately 0 days to not register a competitor's domain. I don't think I would be libelous in stating that.

Additionally, they mentioned that some of the response has been threatening and/or harassing. I cannot speak to that, as none of the public responses I have seen on their page (which have now been deleted) seemed threatening to me (other than the threat to no longer do business with them). I definitely have no insight about what has been emailed to them. I will say that neither I, my partner, nor our company condone any threats or acts of physical or verbal abuse. We do not wish harm upon anyone, least of all someone who provides a service to part of the gaming community.

Finally, they have yet to make any statements in defense of their own actions. I am more than willing to hear their side of the argument. As I said to them in an email I sent yesterday: if they believe their actions to be defensible, then I urge them to defend them. Why did they think that registering our domain names (regardless of legality) was an ethical thing to do, and that it would be looked kindly upon by the community? If they have good reason, I will listen.

bouncyhead · Mar 1, 2012

MajPepper said:
I'd like to once again thank everyone for their support.

By an extraordinary coincidence, I'm over from the UK in a few weeks and in Asheville on 2nd April. Where can I find you? I must drop by and buy something!