WotC may have sent the Pinkertons to a magic leakers home. Update: WotC confirms it and has a response.

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

I think most people are uncomfortable with both scenarios based on what we know about what happened.

This is where I have a bit of confusion. Why would someone make a suggestion that they wouldn't be comfortable with? I've asked several times for others to suggest what hey would do in WoTC's position, and I think only one person gave a response that wasn't, "Not send Pinkerton." Then when they give alternatives it's going to be alternatives that they don't like, either? It just doesn't make sense to me.

When people have said 'if something illegal happened they could have called the police' part of the reason that is being said is because we think they sent pinkerton in because no laws were broken (or nothing that rose beyond something that couldn't be mediated if it were) and maybe even did so because they were using a gray area to intimidate him.

But how would you or WoTC know if any rules have been broken if this guy hasn't spoken to them? As much as we'd like to have a discussion on the facts of the incident, we have to admit we are only able to have a discussion on the statement this YouTuber has made, the published reports, and our own interpretations of what we've read and assumed happened.

That being said, WoTC should also be given a bit of room here since they could not figure out how this guy got the cards. They don't know if laws were broken or not. As has been pointed out, there were previously published videos where he supposedly said he knew they were unreleased cards that he got from a friend. Again, I have no proof, but assuming this is true, I'd wonder how he got them. Who is his friend? How did his friend get them?
If you'd like to assume that this was something he got his hands on by mistake, are you assuming that WoTC new how this guy got his hands on the cards before they were able to make contact with him? I get it, WoTC doesn't have the best reputation. Were they D-bags with the whole OGL thing? Yup, for sure. 100%. Glad they got kicked in the nuts for it, too. It should happen more often (kicking WoTC in the nuts). But does that mean every single thing they do they are wrong to do? That's a bit extreme, to be honest.

I think police showing up at the guy's house for a pack of cards would also be a very bad thing to do (and I imagine most police departments aren't going to show up at a guy's house over a deck of cards).

I'd guess it depends on the value. Report someone has stolen goods in their possession and you know where they are, and it isn't out of the realm of possibilities that some police department will show up with you. You could report someone has a stolen car, and have police go in to get it. A friend had police show up to her house because some guy reported that a car she had just bought was stolen. Cops showed up. They wanted to arrest everyone. THe guy that made the report was there. My friend showed she legally bought the car. THe guy had lost it because he either didn't make his payments and it was repoed, or he had it towed and didn't pay the towing company to get his car.
Either way, he lost the car, had a friend at the DMV tell him who had the car. He reported it to the cops. They showed up. So yeah, WoTC could have potentially used cops, but wouldn't that be even worse? Using actual law enforcement, which could have given this guy the same information, or threats - depending on how you want to look at it, and had the capacity to arrest him and take him out of his house in cuff in front of the neighbors he didn't want to know about his business.

What would you have done in WoTC's position? What choice would you have made if you'd tried to reach out and gotten no response?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

What I'm asking about specifically is where people are saying "that Hasbro (WoTC) employees did attempt to contact [Cannon] through the comments on Youtube, but he deleted their comments on youtube." I haven't come across that anywhere. Not in any article. Not in the comment section of any article. Not in any of the Reddit comments that I've read. Nowhere. On the one hand, it would be a pretty big deal if it turned out that Cannon destroyed or hid evidence of WotC's attempts to contact him. On the other, it would be highly irregular for a company to attempt to communicate about a supposedly important investigation through the comment section of a YouTube video. I get that you might not remember everything you've read on the subject, but if there are enough examples out there for you to say that "[t]hey all state the same things", then hopefully you can remember one or two places where you've seen people say this.

I remember seeing it, inter alia, in the Polygon comments-

Magic publishers sent Pinkerton agents to a YouTuber’s house to retrieve leaked cards

March of the Machine: The Aftermath isn’t due out in stores until May

www.polygon.com

I think it was a person named flyingtoaster or something?

Again, no idea about the veracity as I never saw the original videos. As an aside, it's not exactly hard-hitting journalism when the person is never asked, "Where did you get these cards? Like, the actual place or person? Did you pay for them and get a receipt?"

But it's all clickfarms now.

 

[eyeheartawk]

As I try to live my life boot free, as a general rule, I don't open the door for the police (or police-adjacent) and also never for people I don't know.

Checkmate, Pinkertons.

 

[darjr]

This is where I have a bit of confusion. Why would someone make a suggestion that they wouldn't be comfortable with? I've asked several times for others to suggest what hey would do in WoTC's position, and I think only one person gave a response that wasn't, "Not send Pinkerton." Then when they give alternatives it's going to be alternatives that they don't like, either? It just doesn't make sense to me.

But how would you or WoTC know if any rules have been broken if this guy hasn't spoken to them? As much as we'd like to have a discussion on the facts of the incident, we have to admit we are only able to have a discussion on the statement this YouTuber has made, the published reports, and our own interpretations of what we've read and assumed happened.

That being said, WoTC should also be given a bit of room here since they could not figure out how this guy got the cards. They don't know if laws were broken or not. As has been pointed out, there were previously published videos where he supposedly said he knew they were unreleased cards that he got from a friend. Again, I have no proof, but assuming this is true, I'd wonder how he got them. Who is his friend? How did his friend get them?
If you'd like to assume that this was something he got his hands on by mistake, are you assuming that WoTC new how this guy got his hands on the cards before they were able to make contact with him? I get it, WoTC doesn't have the best reputation. Were they D-bags with the whole OGL thing? Yup, for sure. 100%. Glad they got kicked in the nuts for it, too. It should happen more often (kicking WoTC in the nuts). But does that mean every single thing they do they are wrong to do? That's a bit extreme, to be honest.

I'd guess it depends on the value. Report someone has stolen goods in their possession and you know where they are, and it isn't out of the realm of possibilities that some police department will show up with you. You could report someone has a stolen car, and have police go in to get it. A friend had police show up to her house because some guy reported that a car she had just bought was stolen. Cops showed up. They wanted to arrest everyone. THe guy that made the report was there. My friend showed she legally bought the car. THe guy had lost it because he either didn't make his payments and it was repoed, or he had it towed and didn't pay the towing company to get his car.
Either way, he lost the car, had a friend at the DMV tell him who had the car. He reported it to the cops. They showed up. So yeah, WoTC could have potentially used cops, but wouldn't that be even worse? Using actual law enforcement, which could have given this guy the same information, or threats - depending on how you want to look at it, and had the capacity to arrest him and take him out of his house in cuff in front of the neighbors he didn't want to know about his business.

What would you have done in WoTC's position? What choice would you have made if you'd tried to reach out and gotten no response?

I would have, at the very least, left a voice mail from a listed WotC phone number.

 

[payn]

I would have, at the very least, left a voice mail from a listed WotC phone number.

...and tip him off? I think they wanted to avoid a situation where this product was unrecoverable so the issue could be rectified.

 

[darjr]

...and tip him off? I think they wanted to avoid a situation where this product was unrecoverable so the issue could be rectified.

Then why call his cell phone at all? After all he could have picked it up?

Note the call was from WotC. They wanted to talk to him, the ones who wanted a “surprise” threat were the Pinkertons, they didn’t attempt to contact him before going to his door. As far as I know.

 

[delericho]

I would have, at the very least, left a voice mail from a listed WotC phone number.

Yeah, that's the thing that's strangest about WotC's response to this. If someone calls me from a number and don't leave a message, at best I'm going to ignore them. Most likely I'll block the number and forget it. Not leaving a voicemail is just... odd.

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

I would have, at the very least, left a voice mail from a listed WotC phone number.

How do you know it wasn’t?

 

[Bacon Bits]

Seriously, though, as someone who never played RDR2, I had no idea that they were the primary bad guys in the video game ... which explains the outsized reaction.

Oh, yeah, there was a whole lawsuit against the publishers of RDR2 over the inclusion of Pinkterton, and a counter-suit. Eventually, it all got dropped. Supposedly it was just Securitas AB rattling sabres to get some of Rockstar's income.

I knew them from union-busting stories as well as from Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (an excellent novel even if you're just interested in interwar gangster slang). The Continental Op stories are based on Dashiell Hammett's personal experiences working for Pinkerton. Red Harvest and Glass Key are what inspired Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars. I also knew them as a precursor to the Secret Service and US Marshals.

 

[Ryujin]

I remember seeing it, inter alia, in the Polygon comments-

Magic publishers sent Pinkerton agents to a YouTuber’s house to retrieve leaked cards

March of the Machine: The Aftermath isn’t due out in stores until May

www.polygon.com

I think it was a person named flyingtoaster or something?

Again, no idea about the veracity as I never saw the original videos. As an aside, it's not exactly hard-hitting journalism when the person is never asked, "Where did you get these cards? Like, the actual place or person? Did you pay for them and get a receipt?"

But it's all clickfarms now.

There will be no question asking! Facts are immaterial!! There must be vexation, orneriness, and rancor!!! Rabblerabblerabble!!! CLICK HERE!!!!