Shopping Cart Disco busted Evony’s latest faux pas, showcasing their complete disregard for copyright in using Harper Beresford’s snapshot in their advertising campaign. But just who are Evony, and why do they carry such a bad rep?

In 2009, Evony launched an online advertising campaign which was particularly noticable for its use of racy images of women. As the campaign went on, the images would become more suggestive, and would make references to having to save the queen or lover. Except the Evony game itself has no queen or lover to be saved.. smart move, that.

London’s Guardian newspaper made the insinuation that Evony may have been responsible for millions of spam comments on blogs leading people to their game too. Evony strongly refute this, claiming “neither the company nor its owners were associated with internet fraud or scams”.

So just what is Evony?

Evony is a game in which the player takes the role of the mayor of a city, and the objective is to build up a city. To do this, the player must harvest the local resources and minerals, and expand their population. Sound familiar?

Interestingly, Evony was originally known as Civony but changed their name, perhaps because of the close association with the format of the popular Sid Meier’s Civilisation brand. Alas, Evony LLC also refute this too, denying “any suggestion that it had ‘ripped off’ predecessor games and said a considerable amount had been invested in research and development to produce a unique game.”

Right.

Who uses Evony?

On paper, quite a lot of people. Evony claim that they have 15 million active registered users. Thanks to their heavy investment in their internet campaign, they’re one of the fastest growing MMOs, having gone from obscurity to a strong userbase within a year. Similarly with Second Life and many other MMOs though, it’s worth noting that a sizeable proportion may be alt accounts.

A user on WikiAnswers disputes the number, claiming the server they used only had 5,800 players, the majority of which were inactive. Looking at the statistics, they may be onto something although Evony makes it difficult to gather true numbers.

What do the users think?

It’s a mixed bag, really – some users are complete addicts of Evony and will spend up to 20 hours a day in the game. And in order to progress, that’s the sort of hours it requires.

For a while, Evony ran their advertising campaign with the words “Free Forever!”, and technically that is true. But in order to be in a position where you can elevate your status within the game (to the point where you can do anything of real significance) you need to put real money into it. Users of the platform I spoke to thought this was a major issue with the usability of Evony.

Another issue which has cropped up has been the lack of user support. Forums and blogs are full of complaints that there is no human response to problems encountered, and that it is commonplace to simply lose your money that you invest into the game, without any support to turn to.

But it’s Free, right?

Sure, why not. You don’t have to put in any money, but you have a pretty crappy experience if you don’t. It’s not like a virtual platform such as Second Life where you can make your own money. In Evony, you start off at the bottom rung of the ladder, and in order to keep up with those around you who are paying money to advance themselves, you essentially need to pay to keep your defences up. If you don’t, you get burnt.. badly.

So you’re constantly having to rebuild, and then you just get wiped out again, so you rebuild until you get fed up and whip out the AmEx. And that’s pretty much as free as Evony is.

So why do people play it?

Probably for a similar reason that people go to Justin Bieber concerts. It’s not like the music’s any good, but the ticket was cheap and you’re in the car now.

In truth, I’m told it’s like any other MMO.. once you get into it, you’re hooked. And once you’re hooked, you’re willing to invest both time and money into it.

Who runs Evony?

Evony’s run by a company called Evony LLC, who were magically formed a couple of weeks after a UK gaming blogger, Bruce Everiss, published a highly critical piece about Evony.

One of the directors of Evony LLC – Benjamin Gifford – had this little gem to share:

Mr. Everiss’ attempts to spread his patently false charges to others in the online community cannot be allowed to go unanswered,” said Benjamin Gifford, vice development director for the legal IP strategic division for Evony LLC. “In the digital age in which we now live, online journalists and bloggers – and the traditional media outlets that may rely upon them as sources – must strive for a higher standard of integrity and accuracy. Mr. Everiss’ complete disregard for even the most basic tenets of journalistic responsibility have left our company no alternative but to take these legal actions. We hope now, in facing the full light of day before the Supreme Court, that Mr. Everiss will finally come clean and clear the record.

Bloggers are now defined as “srs bsnss”.

Wait, they sued him?!

They bought legal action up against in, in Sydney Australia. Which is interesting because Bruce Everiss is in the UK, and Evony LLC is registered in Delaware, USA. So why on earth is this case being heard in the land Down Under?

It relates to our friend Benjamin Gifford again, who it turns out is also jointly employed by “Assist Strategic Business Solutions”, who address is in – you guessed it – Australia.

It gets further confusing when you consider Delaware’s lax laws to corporations. Finding out about who owns and runs corporations registered in Delaware is difficult enough as it is, particularly when the corporation isn’t actually in Delaware. Add to that the need for a transnation court order bouncing between the United Kingdom, Delaware and Australia, and things get really messy.

Confused? You should be.

So what happened in court?

Oh this is the fun part. An Australian court heard the case of Evony LLC vs. Everiss a couple of weeks ago, but two days into the trial, Evony LLC dropped the lawsuit and paid all of Bruce Everiss’ legal costs.

Evony LLC claim that they caved in to the pressure from their own user community not to pursue the blogger. Others figured Evony didn’t stand a chance in court.

But the actual reason may lie in a press release about Evony LLC that they put online stating that our good friend Benjamin Gifford (the “vice development director” of Evony’s legal and intellectual property strategic division) holds two university degrees.

Turns out he doesn’t have any degrees. And he got busted for it in the court of law:

[Bell]: It was false to your knowledge when you approved this publication?
[Gifford]: Yes.

Q. You are an out and out liar, aren’t you?
A. No.

Q. How do you say you are not an out and out liar when you have approved statements on the Internet that you hold a Bachelor of Arts, earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Business Administration?
A. That was put there purely as a PR actually.

Q. Mr Gifford, is that a serious answer?
A. Yes.

HER HONOUR

Q. As a PR tool, a lie?
A. Not a lie, your Honour. It was just put out—

Q. It is a lie—
A. —that way so it would look as though.

Q. —you had something that you didn’t have?
A. Correct, your Honour.

Q. It is a lie?
A. Yes.

Q. It is not a PR tool, it is a lie?
A. Yes, your Honour.

BELL

Q. You have no sense of truth and falsity, do you, Mr Gifford?
A. Incorrect.

Q. You thought it was perfectly acceptable
A. Yes.

Q. to publish to the world a lie about your qualifications?
A. Yes.

Q. Why did you think that was perfectly acceptable, Mr Gifford?
A. I thought that was just used for a PR item and that it didn’t mean much and that it would instead just give a

Q. Give a what?
A. More credit towards Evony LLC.

HER HONOUR

Q. It might mean much to people who do actually have a BA and publish that as a truthful statement?
A. Yes, your Honour.

Q. Do you see that?
A. Yes, your Honour.

BELL

Q. And it might mean much to somebody who reads this and relies on it—
A. Correct.

Q. —to think that what is said is truthful?
A. Correct.

Q. So you are actively seeking to mislead people with this press release?
A. Yes.

Q. You were activity consciously seeking to do that?
A. Yes.

Q. And you didn’t have a problem with that?
A. No.

Q. And you still don’t have a problem with that, do you?
A. I can change that statement, yes.

Q. Do you currently have a problem with this, Mr Gifford?
A. Yes.

Q. When did you develop that problem, in the last ten seconds?
A. Yes.

Q. Are there any other lies in this document?
A. No, not that I know of.

Q. Really?
A. Yes.

Yeah.. whoopsie. The case pretty much fell apart after that – not exactly what you’d call a reliable witness, huh?

Okay, then what about all this copying?

Well aside of SCD busting the Second Life avatar image being ripped off on their adverts, several other images are stolen too. Graphics from Age of Empires and the homepage of Runescape were both taken and used for Evony, as well as a classy image of a couple of pornstars in suggestive positions.

Evony claim that the adverts were produced by a firm they outsourced the work to. That firm would then send back the artwork which would get the yay or nay from Evony’s management.

Evony admit that none of the graphics used in the adverts come from the actual game. Which kinda screams false advertising to me, but there you go.

And what about rescuing this fair maiden, or queen with her heavy cleavage that doesn’t actually exist in the game? Evony sidestep the issue, and claim that the advertising campaign was very successful.

Sex sells.. even when you’re not selling sex.

So really, they’re just evil?

To be honest, I think they just made a tonne of mistakes and grew too quickly. More importantly, they’re learning from those mistakes in the run up to the release of the second version of their game – Evony: Age II.

Evony LLC hired Walt Yarbrough, who’s a respected MMO developer and producer, having worked for Mythic Entertainment and Electronic Arts. Employing industry veterans is a step in the right direction to fixing a broken public image.

Evony LLC have said they’re going to ditch the trashy softcore-pornesque advertising campaigns, and quit misleading us into the game through aggressive online advertising.

And they stepped away from the ludicrous lawsuit against the critical blogger, albeit for possibly shady reasons. But then they still have someone in a hot seat who’s been shown to be a liar in court.. and, quite frankly, that doesn’t look good.