Our information is their currency
July 29, 2024 11:55 AM Subscribe
Back when I was at Pokémon, some kid figured out how to extract the images from the card game. He found an icon from the developer and said ‘Holy s----, I found a new Pokémon.’ This kid included his email, and because of the way Pokémon did account creation, when we got the child’s account, we got the parent information, which included a phone number. So I called his mom. from Former Bungie, Pokémon Lawyer Explains How They Caught Leakers [Bloomberg; ungated]
If this is the former GC whose twitter handle is along the lines of 'LEAVE TRANS KIDS ALONE,' I've been enjoying most of his posts for a long, long time. FWIW.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:11 PM on July 29 [1 favorite]
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:11 PM on July 29 [1 favorite]
Yeah that Pokemon story just makes him look like an absolute shitheel, sorry. Doesn’t sound like the kid did anything except figure out out how some information was encoded that was already publicly distributed but not yet decoded, and then they got mad that he did? Well done big guy, you ruined a kid’s day, probably a kid who was a fan of your game; hope you feel real pleased with yourself.
posted by parm at 12:26 PM on July 29 [15 favorites]
posted by parm at 12:26 PM on July 29 [15 favorites]
Scene: The space port
Ticketing Agent: Good morning, citizen. Papers please. Ah ... your career is ...
Don McGowan: I caught internal leakers for a video game company! I was key to protecting our intellectual prop...
Ticketing Agent: Ah, so it says. Ark Fleet Ship B is boarding at terminal 39. Here's your ticket.
posted by mph at 12:50 PM on July 29 [8 favorites]
Ticketing Agent: Good morning, citizen. Papers please. Ah ... your career is ...
Don McGowan: I caught internal leakers for a video game company! I was key to protecting our intellectual prop...
Ticketing Agent: Ah, so it says. Ark Fleet Ship B is boarding at terminal 39. Here's your ticket.
posted by mph at 12:50 PM on July 29 [8 favorites]
I too was expecting the pokemon anecdote to end on a much more charming note than it did. Instead it just comes across as mean, especially since the 'leaking' was just some kid poking around in data the company had already released without any protections. Their devs screwed up by forgetting to encrypt an image file or placing it at an easily guessed URL and this guy is getting a thrill out of casually waving around phrases like 'hacking is a federal crime' to the kid's mom.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:03 PM on July 29 [11 favorites]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:03 PM on July 29 [11 favorites]
In the grand scheme of things lawyers could conceivably do when there are leaks, telling someone's mommy is pretty low key.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:05 PM on July 29 [6 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 1:05 PM on July 29 [6 favorites]
I was hoping a “former Pokémon lawyer” would be a guy who litigated that Snorelax tail case, helped represent Squirtle in his unlawful dismissal, and so on. Sadly, no.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:05 PM on July 29 [6 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:05 PM on July 29 [6 favorites]
This guy could speak with the same gleeful smugness describing the sound newborn puppies make when you murder them.
So I called his mom and said, ‘Listen, I wanted to tell you some things that Andrew is doing on the computer.’ She says, ‘So you’re saying he hacked your game.’ And I hear in the background: ‘I didn’t hack anything!’ I start describing it more technically. She says, ‘Is this a problem?’ I say, ‘Hacking software, that’s a federal crime, but I don’t want that to be the conversation. Why don’t we make it a conversation about the good and bad things he can do with a computer?’
The kid was live-tweeting it. The tweets were this:
1. Pokémon just called my house.
2. What the hell is a general counsel?
3. I now know what I did was wrong, and I’ll never do it again.
Which was fantastic. Absolutely baked my legend in at Pokémon for like five years.
The lawyers they conjoin, stand up now, stand up now!
To arrest you they advise, such fury they devise, the devil in them lies
And hath blinded both their eyes
Stand up now, stand up now!
posted by Johnny Lawn and Garden at 1:13 PM on July 29 [10 favorites]
So I called his mom and said, ‘Listen, I wanted to tell you some things that Andrew is doing on the computer.’ She says, ‘So you’re saying he hacked your game.’ And I hear in the background: ‘I didn’t hack anything!’ I start describing it more technically. She says, ‘Is this a problem?’ I say, ‘Hacking software, that’s a federal crime, but I don’t want that to be the conversation. Why don’t we make it a conversation about the good and bad things he can do with a computer?’
The kid was live-tweeting it. The tweets were this:
1. Pokémon just called my house.
2. What the hell is a general counsel?
3. I now know what I did was wrong, and I’ll never do it again.
Which was fantastic. Absolutely baked my legend in at Pokémon for like five years.
The lawyers they conjoin, stand up now, stand up now!
To arrest you they advise, such fury they devise, the devil in them lies
And hath blinded both their eyes
Stand up now, stand up now!
posted by Johnny Lawn and Garden at 1:13 PM on July 29 [10 favorites]
I thought this was an interesting article! He has a power lawyer’s ego, but, then, that’s what he is. Good post.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:52 PM on July 29 [1 favorite]
posted by Going To Maine at 1:52 PM on July 29 [1 favorite]
A good organisation would have offered the kid a scholarship with a job when he graduated.
posted by Phanx at 2:00 PM on July 29 [5 favorites]
posted by Phanx at 2:00 PM on July 29 [5 favorites]
Hacking software, that’s a federal crime
…is it? I mean hacking into a computer system, that you don’t legally have access to, sure, but finding something in Game/Assets/Developers/TimmyF/VS_Demo/Prototypes/NewPokesMon.asset or whatever, no surely not, draconian EULAs or no
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:07 PM on July 29 [13 favorites]
…is it? I mean hacking into a computer system, that you don’t legally have access to, sure, but finding something in Game/Assets/Developers/TimmyF/VS_Demo/Prototypes/NewPokesMon.asset or whatever, no surely not, draconian EULAs or no
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:07 PM on July 29 [13 favorites]
It is greyer than you might expect, thanks to the DMCA’s DRM circumvention prohibitions.
The big danger is not lawful/unlawful, it is attracting the unwanted attention of a civil litigant with more resources and less morals.
posted by funkaspuck at 2:44 PM on July 29 [7 favorites]
The big danger is not lawful/unlawful, it is attracting the unwanted attention of a civil litigant with more resources and less morals.
posted by funkaspuck at 2:44 PM on July 29 [7 favorites]
The main thing that I got out of this article is that Bungie is rebooting Marathon for some reason, which as a '90s Mac kid I'm not entirely opposed to.
posted by Johnny Assay at 2:51 PM on July 29 [1 favorite]
posted by Johnny Assay at 2:51 PM on July 29 [1 favorite]
If your software is so insecure that a kid can scrape your website for new pokemon, the kid is not the one who screwed up.
posted by Aleyn at 2:55 PM on July 29 [9 favorites]
posted by Aleyn at 2:55 PM on July 29 [9 favorites]
As someone who spent a few years in data security, this reads almost like... a setup? A trap? An attempt to convince people that all they do is look at emails and screenshots? A company that's so far up its own ass that it thinks "a new creature" warrants having an expensive attorney call a kid's mom is going to have some invasive shit on their employees' computers.
posted by McBearclaw at 3:17 PM on July 29 [4 favorites]
posted by McBearclaw at 3:17 PM on July 29 [4 favorites]
Christ, what an asshole.
posted by pattern juggler at 3:50 PM on July 29 [5 favorites]
posted by pattern juggler at 3:50 PM on July 29 [5 favorites]
Can he not hear how much of a bully he's being? Especially the way he described handling a (hypothetical) situation of someone leaking that they were being sexually harassed by their boss. He said he would track down that person and go to them and say "Listen, I’ve figured out it was you. Do I not seem approachable? Why are you and I not having a conversation about this?"
Really? The most appropriate way to "protect your people from bad things" is to identify and confront someone who was being sexually harassed by their boss and demonstrably didn't trust the leadership or HR of the company to handle that well? Rather than, for example, offer support for the person in that situation or investigate the actual substance of the allegations.
posted by Mathter_Lee at 4:01 PM on July 29 [6 favorites]
Really? The most appropriate way to "protect your people from bad things" is to identify and confront someone who was being sexually harassed by their boss and demonstrably didn't trust the leadership or HR of the company to handle that well? Rather than, for example, offer support for the person in that situation or investigate the actual substance of the allegations.
posted by Mathter_Lee at 4:01 PM on July 29 [6 favorites]
In the grand scheme of things lawyers could conceivably do when there are leaks, telling someone's mommy is pretty low key.
But, let's be clear, it's still scummy. Their ploy was to give parents a scare so they'd overreact when they spoke to their children. So no real legal threat, but it did have an oversized effect on that kid's childhood. The societal harm brushed safely out of public view, the guy gets to brag to his bosses that he's making a difference, he gets his gigantic lawyer salary, and the only cost was to a kid's mental health. Spit spot, nice and neat!
Nintendo sits at this weird junction. They're the only AAA game publisher that seems to care an iota more for their product that whatever earns them a mathematically optimized profit, and yet, they're nearly as litigious as Disney, and they've gotten worse, even than this, in recent years. It's a muddled legacy.
posted by JHarris at 5:19 PM on July 29 [2 favorites]
But, let's be clear, it's still scummy. Their ploy was to give parents a scare so they'd overreact when they spoke to their children. So no real legal threat, but it did have an oversized effect on that kid's childhood. The societal harm brushed safely out of public view, the guy gets to brag to his bosses that he's making a difference, he gets his gigantic lawyer salary, and the only cost was to a kid's mental health. Spit spot, nice and neat!
Nintendo sits at this weird junction. They're the only AAA game publisher that seems to care an iota more for their product that whatever earns them a mathematically optimized profit, and yet, they're nearly as litigious as Disney, and they've gotten worse, even than this, in recent years. It's a muddled legacy.
posted by JHarris at 5:19 PM on July 29 [2 favorites]
some background on the legal aspects:
Lawful Neutral: Cheating, copyright law, and the WoW Glider lawsuit (Massively Overpowered blog, Feb. 2020)
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:30 PM on July 29
Lawful Neutral: Cheating, copyright law, and the WoW Glider lawsuit (Massively Overpowered blog, Feb. 2020)
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:30 PM on July 29
Man, I hope Pokemon got that kid some cool promo merch for being such a huge, excited fan / customer
posted by eustatic at 6:49 PM on July 29
posted by eustatic at 6:49 PM on July 29
Well, and this guy has never worked for Nintendo. The Pokemon Company is its own thing.
posted by potrzebie at 8:00 PM on July 29
posted by potrzebie at 8:00 PM on July 29
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posted by GoblinHoney at 12:09 PM on July 29 [25 favorites]