Sure, but if coffee mugs & t-shirts count towards maintaining the Edge Games trademark there is something wrong. It should be games related products only.
The tidbit about him being a convicted stalker is priceless.
One of the previously linked articles said he has games “in development” on all major platforms.
Sure but that is pretty much a pile of shite. He has licensed the rerelease of 6 80’s games on mobile and continually pretends to be ‘developing’ an all platform game. Apparently even going to the lengths of slapping a ‘2’ on the end of the games ‘in development’ page despite the original version never being released.
In no way is EDGE games any kind of game producer by any meaningful use of the term.
IGDA is now taking motions to remove Tim Langdell from the board of directors. If you are an IGDA member, please go read your email and then vote.
Was just coming here to post that.
It’s amazing this guy is on the board when he hasn’t been involved in a video game in any way in 15 years.
I just got that e-mail myself, and was coming here to post it as well.
About damn time.
That was the easiest IGDA voting decision I’ve ever made.
Dear Members,
Recently an email went out that appeared to come form the IGDA. The
From address read: “[email protected].”
That email address was spoofed, and the communication was not an
official IGDA communication. We are currently reviewing the methods by
which it was sent to see if this was sent out by people ignorant of proper
use of the IGDA website, or if there were malicious actions involved. We
are also reviewing the method by which your email addresses was
obtained and if that was done ethically or not. It is my hope that this was
done by someone simply overzealous about their cause, and not for more
destructive reasons.
Please be aware the IGDA was not responsible for this email, and does not
have anything to do with the content or the links provided. You should read
and use such links at your own risk.
We will investigate this issue and provide you with information on our
findings as they are confirmed.
Thank you,
Joshua Caulfield
Executive Director
IGDA
-Julian
Yeah, that was a surprise. I don’t regret voting, though.
As a bonus, this gave me the “Edgy” perk:
Cynicism +1
Paranoia +1
This link should explain who sent the email, how they sent it and why:
http://www.igda.org/Forums/showthread.php?threadid=36585
There was no malicious intent behind it and it used publically available information to obtain the emial adresses of members. The official statement is rather sensationalist as the official email was not ‘spoofed’ but a natural result of using the website to communicate with the members.
Thanks, Dan! That clears it up for me. I’m sure there will be a lot of animated dicussion around this in various circles.
Yeah, to clarify I think it was a bit cheeky but then something needed to be done to raise enough awareness among the IDGA membership to get the votes needed to kick of the process of ousting Tim. I had even considered resigning up to the IDGA again just to vote on this (having let my membership lapse some time ago).
As an outsider looking in, the whole thing looks like a clusterfuck.
Huh. Wow. Well… I guess it’s still a legit email, it just wasn’t undertaken by the board. I wonder if a vote of IGDA members still can result in a special board meeting?
I admit I initially thought it must have been an official email due to the @igda address, which makes the thing a little dodgy.
I hope it ends up with a positive effect, though.
I wouldn’t advise the original article as a good source, it makes a few key mistakes:
- Langdell is in some way responsible for EDGE magazine. He isn’t.
- Langdell’s EDGE Games is a ‘brand’ worth the name. Its not.
Also, in the comments on the article he rolls back on a lot of his ‘fair and balanced take’ in the original article.
From what I understand Tim has never won any significant decisions in his favour in a court of law. He has instead utilised his trademarks in an ambushing fashion to delay the release of products enough with legal action (which he would certainly lose) so that it becomes cheaper to pay him to go away than wait for the legal action to finish. IANAL so I don’t know if its possible to get some kind of final decision that stops him from continuing to do this. He lost versus Namco in the Soul Edge case despite the game being renamed in the US. Its not clear exactly what happened in the EDGE magazine case only that since 2008 Future Publishing claims to own the traademark to the magazine’s name. Mostly he has ignored higher profile release’s (failing to file suit against EA for Mirror’s Edge) but targetted smaller and especially foreign developers.
In summary, an utter wanker (apologies to Tom for using a British swearword in his living room).
Tim does use the EDGE magazine logo on his website, so I’d think they’re still paying for a license (or paid for some long-term one) - otherwise he’d not have any right to use that logo, would he? The magazine has been using it for almost 16 years now.
I’ve no idea on the EDGE logo, maybe they considered him so inconsequential that it wasn’t worth spending the money on lawyers. Also, the fact that they used to have a licensing arrangement with him - possibly out of ignorance or from the fact that his company was more active when EDGE started - may complicate matters.
TIGSource now has a semi-permenant page dedicated to Tim and his antics in one place:
http://www.tigsource.com/pages/edge-games
It seems, anecdotally, there is a lot of evidence that he’s been screwing over developers since the 80’s in the UK. Also the court documents I’ve glanced over seem to display a lengthy recorded litany of delaying tactics, e.g. ‘Sorry for my late filing of my request for a delay on the ruling but I couldn’t find a computer’. Any loose lawyer’s want to verify that he is doing anything other than wasting the court’s & developers (and Marvel’s and Sony’s) time?