Battlefoam issues a cease and desist order to BoK

[kidterminal]

Battlefoam issues a cease and desist order to Blood of Kittens war gaming news blog. Battlefoam alleges that Blood of Kittens defamed Romeo Flip in a March 7, 2013 article titled Meat or Meta: Bad Battlefoam Practices. Wherein BoK falsely accuses Mr. Filip of (among other things) “physically and verbally threatening potential Battlefoam customers”

Blood of Kittens has refused to post an affidavit on his blog attesting statements where false and he has refused to pay Battlefoam $2,500 in "legal fees". Blood of Kittens is gathering swarn affidavits and funds for his defense.

The original article has been taken down by BoK pending the lawsuit. You can find links to the legal papers here:
http://bloodofkittens.com/blog/2013/05/ ... d-kittens/

[Taylor]

Is it just me, or are wargaming companies getting just as bad as Apple when it comes to suing/legal action? the only difference I can see in this is instead of suing competitive companies for violating their IP, they are legally harassing members of the community that could potentially be customers of their product.

This is bad PR all around for these companies. Maybe GW, Apple, and Battlefoam should team up - they seem to have the same knee-jerk reaction of lawyer-ing up on a regular basis.

T.

[Khail]

Ahh Romeo. Same ol' Romeo.

[valthonis]

It's actions like this that will make me never support them or their products.

[Steam-Age Dandy]

Oh boy that does suck. And I really wanted to buy the Dreadfleet and SpaceHulk box inlays. However shall I store those games now... darn

[Lampyridae]

One more reason not to buy from them. I feel sorry for his employees.

[kidterminal]

Oh boy that does suck. And I really wanted to buy the Dreadfleet and SpaceHulk box inlays. However shall I store those games now... darn

Steam-Age Dandy this is a news item not a boycott. Purchasing from Battlefoam or donating to Blood of Kittens is entirely a personal choice. Buy the box inlays if you need them.

[JTM93]

No Offense but having read that Blog... I doubt most f the things are true or where in context.

I mean the person also bashed Privateer Press and a few others for Bad Practice and when it was revealed what had happened he lost a lot of credibility.

That is he said they refused to "Act on their guarantees". That is he had used a miniature and it didn't work in his list so he demanded a total refund for the item and more to cover some other crap he said.

[kidterminal]

No Offense but having read that Blog... I doubt most f the things are true or where in context.

I mean the person also bashed Privateer Press and a few others for Bad Practice and when it was revealed what had happened he lost a lot of credibility.

That is he said they refused to "Act on their guarantees". That is he had used a miniature and it didn't work in his list so he demanded a total refund for the item and more to cover some other crap he said.

That may be correct, which is why I listed the only accusation that many members of this forum know to be true; threats of physical violence. I don't know anything about the other assertions.

[JTM93]

I had never heard of the Threats. At least not from Romeo. I have heard of it from one of their former Employees.

[kidterminal]

This is what you will want see. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=70

[JTM93]

I never heard of that... (Though I despise most Podcasts...)

[Taylor]

I think that when it comes to lawsuits like this, regardless of the he said/she said crap, the one who brings it to that level automatically looks like the bully. Sort of the "You doth protest too much" scenario. It's also a David and Goliath situation. On one hand, Battle Foam can afford a good lawyer with a professional looking document... the other guy runs a blog who has a lawyer who makes spelling mistakes...

T.

[JTM93]

Meh. They are always like that.

[Steam-Age Dandy]

Hm I have just reda the whole thing and this leaves me with the question: Does anyone else make Dreadfleet / Space Hulk foam inlays?

[Hunter2k3]

Try KR Multicase

http://www.krmulticase.com/trays.aspx?type=L&showsets=Y&system=WHBOX&army=DFL&d=1

[JohnnyM]

Possibly going against the grain here, but this kind of 'journalism' has been long overdue a proper response. Here in the UK, you can more or less print anything you want preceded by the words 'it is alleged'. There is no obligation to make any corrections, follow up stories with actual outcomes, or hold any actual responsibility to the fallout of what you print.

Regardless of anyone's personal feelings towards Romeo, he has business(es) to run, and unfortunately a great deal of his trade is Internet based. If someone chooses to make an article about something likely reputation damaging, they should be able to back it up with fact. If they can...well that's a journalists job.

Those in the uk here will know what awful depths our media have sunk to (if international users not aware of the 'Millie dowler' scandal I will post, not sure if its an international news story). I think it's about time people who point the proverbial finger were made to back it up with fact

[kidterminal]

We have the same Media issues here in the US.

[JTM93]

Do you mean Milly Dowler? If so then yes it was fairly major.

But try America. The day after the Boston Bombings there were reports of them "Being trained in secret terrorist camps on U.S. Soil" and such.

EDIT: Ninja'd... Though ours is worse. They make up as much evidence as they can. Most of which are simply out-of-context things they are using to support their accusations.

[JohnnyM]

I did yeah, too lazy to even look up correct spelling. The follow up from its been awful. We had a great big inquiry, to which the media basically said
"Oh yes, we were very naughty, haven't we all learnt our lesson chaps?"
To which the inquiry proposed better regulation of the press
"Regulation? That's censorship! The government want to run all the newspapers! What happened to freedom of the press? You go too far sir!"

Free to ruin lives with impunity more like

The saddest thing about the Boston bombings was the rash of conspiracy videos up the next day. My favourite was the one about 'the craft' a mysterious mercenary organisation hired by the government that were pictured at the marathon by keen eyed conspiracy spotters. For ease of identification they all wore camo trousers.

[JTM93]

Oh my favorite was they tried pinning it ALL on a Private Security Company here in Missouri.

[Scarecrow]

All i can say is wow...

[studentochaos]

Actually this is a great example of why this Datasphere forum is necessary. After the last blow up with the podcast and Romeo making threats against individuals no one will start this thread on the official forum. Being legitimate news relevant to the community it should be started on the infinity forum, but even if someone did start it, the mods would likely cut it not wanting to get back to the bad blood from last time.

As to BoK claims, he is a blogger talking about a company and a semi-public individual. It seems like they have strong legal ground to stand on. http://www.popehat.com/2013/05/02/battl ... dangerous/

[kidterminal]

Thank you studentochaos for bringing this to our attention. Data Sphere will bring anything and everything pertinent to the Infinity community to the community. Besides Data Sphere and Popehat DakkaDakka is following this issue. The blog Plastic Legions has written a concise report on Battlefoams legal actions against Outriders Hobbies and Sabol Studios. That can be found here: http://plasticlegions.blogspot.com/2010/09/foam-wars.html

Oh studentochaos please introduce yourself in the introductions section.

[Pacific]

The guy is unbelievable, and has reached the point now where he has actually become a great source of entertainment for the Infinity community (perhaps even wargaming?)

Personalities like that make life more interesting I suppose.. although I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of it, and I sure as hell wouldn't buy any Battlefoam stuff after reading about it.

[kidterminal]

Bare in mind that most of not all the 3rd party companies you like on this forum would have difficulty fighting off a legal challenge financially. War gaming is mainly a small business environment where companies can be easily brought down by tactics like these. Thus denying you the customer a potentially better/cheaper product.

[Magno]

Seems there is always smoke were Romeo treads.
He connected me with his mom for shipping terrain out to GenCon.
Even though she couldn`t help me directly, she was mire than generous with her time in helping me out.
Any business I`ve had with Romeo has been very friendly and helpful.
Either Romeo is super protective of his business and name, or he just doesn`t manage conflict well.

[kidterminal]

I think the o-12 indicates he may have some anger management issues. The foam wars is simply an effort to knock out competition. That practice has become common in every market in America today and is certainly not only limited to battlefoam.

[studentochaos]

The funny thing is that I agree Magno, he seems to really try hard to be a good businessman. However, he is not good at public relations by having angry outbursts take over (here is the old bat company issue mentioned in the popehat stuff http://rumorsontheinternets.org/tag/diablo-bats/).

First, the foam wars stuff just looks really bad. You can play that kind of hardball when your audience is diffuse and not personally invested in your products. Is the gaming community a case of that? I am not sure, but the forums get angry about it. Does that affect the bottom line, maybe yes, maybe no. It is hard to say if people who care about this represents a very small minority or not.

Second, this new BOK thing is a different matter. It seems personal. BOK claim they took down the post prior to the C&D letter. If that is true, then the letter itself was actually about sending the message: "You have complained about me and my business practices too much, so this is to intimidate you to shut up". It clearly had emotion invested in it and was designed to frighten BOK and take blood ($2500 specifically). I don't think he ever expected that BOK would get a pro bono lawyer, I doubt he thought through this getting more press to his already tenuous relationship with the gaming community. I assume this fell into the trap of bad self narratives about the outcomes likely to emerge from this. The very fact that we are having this discussion about him as an individual and not a company suggests that BOK has an extremely strong case in addition to the fact that the basics of the case seem to be true on the face of evidence based on the claims made. BOK alledged that Romeo threatens people (Infinity community has seen this), doesn't follow through on prize support (O-12 didn't follow through so far on their promises to give an army at 1000 likes on facebook or any of the model giveaways since 600 likes), and the third claim was they didn't honor discounts (which is the only part I can't speak too).

It seems to me like Battlefoam is best settling this matter quickly and not taking it to court frankly.

[Magno]

There have been other claims that BF reneges on their prize support promises while attending events. Offering up this and that for exhibitor space deals.