Affiliate Imposter

[Webb]

So it appears that we have a site claiming to be our affiliate when they are clearly not. This site is e-mailling from the address gamesuneed2beat@hotmail.com, so please ignore their attempts when contacting you.

This site are clearly falsifying a relationship with us to get you the user and creator of the guide to give up your hardwork to them. We are not affiliated with this site.

The only affiliates we have at present time are...

360Monster (http://www.360monster.com/)
360 Voice (http://www.360voice.com/)
Knuckles Dawson (http://www.knucklesdawson.com/)
News4Gamers (http://www.news4gamers.com/)
openXBOX360 (http://www.openxbox360.com/)
Vgescape (http://www.vgescape.com/xbox360)

No one else. So if they contact you, please let us know as we will not stand for this. Thanks in advance and thanks to K-Dog for bringing this to our attention.

[Dark Fury]

Just had this guy ask me for permission of my COD3 guide over msn - i didn't read this before, but in any case i told him i don't give permission unless x360a.org does. If he talks to me again i'll tell him where he can shove it.

[Webb]

Appreciate it fella. Looks like this site is just looking for a shortcut to where we got to! :mad:

[Im a Manatee]

So, play asia and game aren't affiliates? Or are those just links?

[Nukeshell]

He added me like 3 weeks ago asking the same thing. And I gave him the same answer as Dark Fury;)

[Nukeshell]

So, play asia and game aren't affiliates? Or are those just links?
They are there for advertising, if anyone orders a game by clicking on the link on the Homepage, X360a will get some money out of it.

[Webb]

So, play asia and game aren't affiliates? Or are those just links?

Play asia and Game are sponsored links. They are called an affiliate program but work on a different basis.

Site affiliations are mutual exchange of links and support.

He added me like 3 weeks ago asking the same thing. And I gave him the same answer as Dark Fury;)

Appreciate it :)

[Diabloguy56]

I hate to say this to you guys, and I know I have no chance of you saying that we are going to be "future affiliates" or even "affiliates" AGAIN.

This has really gotten out of hand. Let me prove the point that I tried proving to DaWebbmeister, but at the time, he just wouldn't listen.

A while back, my site, (edit), was being built. Of course I wanted to cross market/be affiliates with some major sites, and if we did so, they wouldn't be sorry (You guys are missing out on FREE PR [Public Relations]. PR usually costs 5 - 10 GRAND a MONTH, but you would have gotten it free).


So, I go around asking different websites the same thing I asked you guys, they said they will discuss it internally. I finally come to www.X360A.org (http://www.X360A.org), and I talk to Minty and DaWebbmeister in a three-way chat on MSN messenger. We did not come up with anything, and we decided that we were gonna wait to discuss anything until (edit) is finished.


A month or two later, (edit) is still not finished, and I talk to Minty. I talk for a few minutes until he said that we would be "future affiliates". I was very pleased.

A while later, I look at some of the www.X360A.org (http://www.X360A.org) achievement guides, look at the copyright which, at the time, said this:

"Copyright 2005-2007 This Guide may NOT be reproduced under any circumstances without the permission of the author OR XBox360Achievements.org (http://xbox360achievements.org/)"

I gather all the contact information for all the people who created achievement guides for www.X360A.org (http://www.X360A.org). Then, I start asking around for permission to use some achievement guides. Some people said yes (I AM NOT SAYING WHO... NO CHANCE.), and some people said no.

That night, I post in the forums on your site, here is the link:

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showthread.php?t=15412 (http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showthread.php?t=15412)

DaWebbmeister replies with a rude message in the forums, emails me with a very nasty message, and IMs me with a very nasty message. In fact, I have the first message right here:

"Are you taking the piss fella?"


We talk for a while, and DaWebbMeister says that we have no chance of being affiliates. I tell him what I am telling you here, up to this point.


A few days later, I talk to Minty. I tell him about this, in a short form, and he shows me the "NEW AND EDITED COPYRIGHT" Which says this:


"Copyright 2005-2007 This Guide may NOT be reproduced under any circumstances without the permission of the author AND XBox360Achievements.org (http://xbox360achievements.org/)"

He said that the copyright has always said that.


Notice this. The copyright BEFORE I asked around for achievement guides said this:


"Copyright 2005-2007 This Guide may NOT be reproduced under any circumstances without the permission of the author OR XBox360Achievements.org (http://xbox360achievements.org/)"


The copyright AFTER I asked around for achievement guides says this:


"Copyright 2005-2007 This Guide may NOT be reproduced under any circumstances without the permission of the author AND XBox360Achievements.org (http://xbox360achievements.org/)"


Notice they changed the "OR" to an "AND."


You guys blamed me for your own doing. I do not like to do "business" with an amateur AND ignorative administrator team (excluding RoutineX, I have not talked to him. BUT, I have tried to contact him for months [besides PMing].


Today, I found this post, by googling my username on my website, "GamesUNEed2Beat".


I do not appreciate what you did, and I hope that you will not do something like this EVER again.


Forrest M. Leichtberg

[PerpetualHeaven]

Hey guys shit happens move on and find new people.

Fine he was being friendly, but you know sometimes things just don't work out. To prevent our content from being on your site, they've made it an "and" ordeal.

Like honestly, I can see you guys need material but you should get your own material and stop asking people from here. I'm not trying to be mean or anything. It's cool he came on here and was honest about the whole thing, but business is business.

[Diabloguy56]

Sorry to be rude myself, but did you even read what I posted? I'm sorry, but this just shows me more reason to have even less respect for this website... Just accept the fact that you guys made a mistake, and move on yourself. As for me, I did move on, but when I saw this post in the ANNOUNCEMENTS SECTION, I couldn't stop myself from revealing the truth.

[Krazie]

A few bans have been issued to those that came here just to cause problems. Diablo, if you have a problem with anybody on our staff, take it up with them. Not only does coming on our forums and plugging your site 5-6 times in one post while flaming staff members shows lack of integrity, its kind of pathetic, IMO. Things can be handled maturely, please do that from now on. Thread will be locked with any more flaming, and I have removed all references to the site, you're not gonna get publicity around here like that, nice try tho.

[Diabloguy56]

OKAY, I will leave you guys alone, but, just for your information, our site hasn't even launched yet. Meaning, it is normal to have almost no members on the forum when you havent even launched. Thank You for understanding the message I am trying to give to you. :omg :rolleyes:

[L3giOn]

Go ahead and keep making new accounts HackInABox, I've got all night buddy. :boxer

[Krazie]

Go ahead and keep making new accounts HackInABox, I've got all night buddy. :boxer

Me also....:uzi:

[Diabloguy56]

It's funny to see how this thread has turned out to be... (Not very respectful) But than again, you have to remember, this is a perfect example of what keeps our lives interesting :P

[Krazie]

It's funny to see how this thread has turned out to be... (Not very respectful) But than again, you have to remember, this is a perfect example of what keeps our lives interesting :P

We're completely okay with issues if they're handled maturely. People that join the site to do nothing else but cause problems or flame others aren't needed though

[Diabloguy56]

Agreed. I am sorry for causing trouble here, as for all the other people, that was their choice...

[Minty]

Considering you guys were still looking to set up an affiliation, and we hadnt actually said no up till now, you kinda shot yaselfs in the foot, whether it was the site staff or users.

[Diabloguy56]

:) I realize this, Gotta give us props :drunk

Please, Don't take this offensively, but I don't think I would have agreed to be affiliates after all this trouble. Meaning that even before this day, I wouldn't want to be affiliates. (We wanted to be affiliates at first, before the whole mess with the achievement guides.) I'm sure you didn't want to be an affiliate with us either, considering that we are a new site and we are supposedly "piggybacking".

Maybe we can work something out in the far future, when we are both huge in the Xbox Community :D .

Again, I apologize for this mess, but this is how I felt.

[Minty]

Job sorted then, no point in having the thread turn into flame wars again. Lock down

[RoutineX]

When two sites has about the same goals, going around and just wanting to dupe that site isn't going to take you anywhere. And thats why there was so much fuzz about it. If you have the same goals as another site, and want to get somewhere, you better either write your articles yourself or get help from people from your own community, like ours do to the website. Not go around everywhere else to gather as much work that's already made by others.

If we didn't have an awesome community like we have, there wouldn't have been much of a site. It's the supporters and community that build site, not necessarily the content within. You can have the best article in the world on your website, but if you don't have anyone interested in reading it, or anyone to back you up and help you getting more content, it's not going to help you out. It's our awesome community that keeps us very alive and on top of things.

Do you think that I would spend my days coding and adding features to the website/forums, pay about $150 every month out of my own pockets for the server, and all the hard work of the other admins and mods to keep the forums clean and expanding our site further, if it weren't for our community?

And the reason the copyright was changed was to the fact we didnt change the year in the copyright from 2005-2007, where it still was 2005-2006. And than someone comes the 1st of January, 2007 and think that he can just freely copy the whole website just because the new year isn't included in the copyright. If you look at the date of the first post, it was 1st on January, 2007. Coincidence?

We only added a copyright in the guides (that needed a new wording after another attempt to bypass it) after someone tried to copy everything since it didn't have a copyright notice. Our footer states the copyright on every page, so it shouldn't be any questions or problems regarding that.



Think about it like this...
If we were going to add reviews to the site, and we visted i.eg. IGN.com and went to every game and gathered the emails of the authors, and than just asked them if we could have their reviews that they wrote for/to IGN. Wouldn't you honestly think that it's beyond rude? I mean... it's not even trying. It's just trying to get somewhere by being spoon fed with content that has already been made.

And like I stated above that "the guide pages didn't have copyright notices" or "the dates indicate that the copyright is expired". If this is how people want to do business, by trying to exploit every loophole they find to get some copied content for themselves, I have no problem understanding why people react like this.

I also don't see why you would need to "reveal the truth" 25 days after, by writing a long post about us being amateurs, and try to plug your site a couple of times in the process. And that after another attempt on just copying our content, so I'm not sure what that truth was that you were trying to reveal.

And you don't appreciate what we did?
With that you mean you don't appreciate that we don't want people to just copy our content and want to protect the hard work of our community...

You got that right.

[P1NSEEKER]

Well said.

[Minty]

The Routine hammer has fallen :p

[DaKing240]

Wow, Routine doesn't talk that much... but when he does... he says what everyone on the site is thinking.

[Webb]

This dude's a jackass! Never read Routine's War & Peace :p But this is what I have to say...

We had to change the message so ignorant people who have no idea of copyright laws didn't attempt to exploit it.

How you cannot expect me to be pissed off when you are contacting our users behind the sites back trying to get hold of their work which they submitted to us!!!

Take this as a warning...

YOU WILL NEVER BE AN AFFILIATE OR ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS SITE WHILE I AM ADMIN.

I only deal with professional people and you are clearly not. You come on to our site calling the admin ignorant and amateur!! :biglaugh Look up irony in a dictionary why don't you!