My experience with Wiigamestudio.com (AKA I almost abandoned my identity as Arikado)

Yesterday was just like any other day/ Aside from me being "Arikado" and doing the things Arikado does, it would've  been a perfectly normal day for any teenager teenager. Wake up, high school (Seniors 2010!!!), clubs/activities/sports, come home, do homework - the essentials of any day in the life of an teenager. Every day, the first thing I do when I come home is check my inbox. I was startled and scared when I found this message in there from fatquack, the man who runs http://www.wiigamestudio.com (a site which illegally sells a program that makes unofficial Nintendo Wii homebrew via exploiting devkitPRO and GRRLIB) :

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 Will Thompson
(Arikado/Cornell)

I am FatQuack from Wii Game Studio and if you try any more funny business, I will press charges for fraud due to your fake email from paypal. After 01/02/2010 you may return to wii game studio (though I cannot see why you would want to) but further offence will cause a perminate ban a legal action against ths paypal fraud.

--
Robert Dixon - FatQuack
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To say the least, I was very shaken up by this e-mail. It seemed to me that fatquack had found evidence that I had sent an e-mail to him pretending to be PayPal and that I had posted on his forum under the alternate name "Cornell" in a manner that seemed unfit to him. He also seemed convinced that my name is Will Thompson and it's certainly not.

A while earlier to receiving this e-mail, the WiiBrew Forums which I help run had been spammed with advertisements for fatquack's Wii Game Studio. A member of our forums discovered that Wii Game Studio was being illegally sold as it fails to include necessary license files in it's distribution. Our forum member (WikiFSX) posted in their forums about it and his post was deleted by fatquack. I was initially under the impression that WikiFSX was also banned but realized later that another member of their forums who posted against the illegal distribution under the name "Cornell" was the one who was banned. Like WikiFSX, all of his posts were deleted.

And now, somehow, it seemed that fatquack had become convinced and had proof that I was Cornell and that I illegally sent him a fraudulent e-mail. I assure everyone that none of his accusations were true and I was extremely confused. I was seriously afraid of a lawsuit and would do everything in my power to prevent, including abandoning my identity as "Arikado" forever.

In my confused and upset state, I quickly sent this response to fatquack:

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Hello Robert,

First a quick preface, I certainly do not want any legal trouble or to be challenged in a law suit. As you have generously stated that despite your claims against me you intend not to press a lawsuit, I strongly plead you to keep to that display of generosity. And I thank you very much for your generosity and kindness shown in e-mailing me alternatively to taking a rash action of a lawsuit against me.

Your e-mail has given me a lot of questions which I would appreciate that you would answer so I can get everything straight. If any of these questions offend you, you do not have to answer or even acknowledge them. Again, as stated in my preface, the last thing I want (and I hope you as well want) is a lawsuit.

First, my name is not Will Thompson. If you have been having trouble with someone you know is named Will Thompson, then you have got the wrong person. I am wondering if you would mind explaining to me why/how you believe I am Will Thompson.

Second, I have never used this e-mail under the name "Cornell" nor have I ever connected my internet nickname "Arikado" to "Cornell". Someone on the WiiBrew Forums mentioned that someone named "Cornell" was banned from your forums for issues relating to some recent legality trouble with your WiiGameStudio product. I am wondering why/how you would connect me with "Cornell".

Third, I have been advocating people online to report your product to paypal as I believed it was being illegally sold but I am wondering why/how you would connect me with a fake e-mail you received. There are a lot of angry people on the internet over your product and I am wondering why out of all the people who could have sent you it you connected it to me. Also, may I ask you to forward the fake email to me so I may analyze it myself to see how it could connect to me?

Finally, let me say that I am a rather young person (under 18) and that I can not handle and do not want any legal trouble. I truly appreciate you emailing me before filing a lawsuit in order to talk things over. I certainly agree to not try any more "funny business". I would like to note that I have not confessed to anything in this email but am simply asking for information on how your claims connects to me.

Lastly, if anything in this email, offends, frustrates, annoys, bothers, or contains any other content you do not appreciate, you do not have to respond to it. You do not have to even respond to this email of you dont want to. But whatever you decide to do, please, please do not file a lawsuit against me.

--Arikado
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I spent the time until I received a response nervously considering that this may be the end of me if fatquack had some form of proof I could not disprove easily. All I had ever done to him was speak out against his flaky product on the WiiBrew Forums and on tehskeen (RIP Tehskeen) and now it seemed I may lose everything for my trivial sentences I made publicly viewable. I pretended this was all a bad dream waiting for his response.

Here is the response I received from fatquack:

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Hello.  I am sorry if I have wrong person, but a user informed me that you were the Cornell in my forum and after having researched your username in other forums, I thought it is likely to be true as you have said various comments with similar content to what has been said by Cornell about the legality of Wii Game Studio.

I would not take legal action anyway without substatial proof that I had the correct person, and I still endevour to find evidence of who cornell is.

Let me inform you of the offences Cornell has made:
Offensive behaviour to my forum members, including exposing personal information.
Impersonating PayPal in an email he sent to me.

I do not see it as a crime to suggest that Wii Game Studio is illegal (as you have done on some forum posts you have made elsewhere).  This is just a matter that needs to be cleared up.  I have explained a few times on my forum that it is legal and explained how it does not contradict the liscences of various software on which it relies.

The ONLY basis for assuming that Cornell was you and linking it with the username 'Arikado' is the information I have received from a user.  Please forgive me if I am wrong and I am sorry for the misunderstanding.

The reason the paypal email is suspected to be fake is because it was sent though my email subission form in my website, and not from paypal directly to my paypal email, and I contacted paypal who state that it must therefore be fake and it quoted facts about my paypal account that were untrue, such as the fact that it had been disabled.

If you do happen to know of any information about the identity of the 'Cornell' user on my forum, I would appreciate your help.

Once again, sorry for the misunderstanding and if you would like me to explain the legality of my product to you, I would be more than willing.

Any connection I made to you (the email included) was a connection I made to the user Cornell, who I thought was you.

I only connected the name Will Thompson to the name Arikado, from http://facebook.com/Arikado who has joined various game-related pages, so I thought it was accurate.
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So it turned out that fatquack had threatened me with a lawsuit over some speculation in his undying attempt to get at whoever said things about his illegal product that he didn't like. After spending the worst time of my life thinking my escapade as Arikado was over and that I might be in a jail cell soon, I was (and still am) extremely infuriated that this had all been caused by fatquack desperately going to any means necessary to get the last laugh his spammer. My response to fatquacks email sum's up my feelings at this point very nicely:

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Hi Robert,

First, thank you for admitting your mistake. I must say, you really shook me up as I was not expecting this and I certainly am not directly related to any of your accusations.

The name "Arikado" was picked for myself because it is one of my favorite video-game characters in the Castlevania video-game series. Literally everywhere I go online the name is taken. I post under the name "OArikadoO" if the name "Arikado" is taken because the O's emphasize "Arikado" strongly. If I have something to say, I will not hide my identity under an alternative name. So, it is certainly not surprising that someone on facebook stole the name before I could :/

The connections between me and Cornell were probably made because whoever your friend is thought, "Hey look, two people who strongly dislike Wii Game Studio, zomg!!! They must be the same person". Obviously this demonstrates the sleuthing tactics of a two year old and I will thank you to in the future to find some form of proof beyond speculation to before accusing anyone of anything.

I would never, ever send someone a fraudulent email and I would certainly not ever pretend to be PayPal of all people.

If I have something to say, I will never hide under an alternate name nor will I hide behind fraudulent e-mails.

I certainly don't mind you questioning my activities or pointing out a possible connection, but to falsely accuse and threaten me upon a basis of speculation is simply inexcusable. You clearly must have some form of mental illness if you want to take down this "Cornell" you don't like so badly that you would go to such lengths as to do what you've done to me.

I'm afraid this whole incident has made me feel rather sour towards yourself, your friend who accused me, and even more so towards your product.

I will thank you never to email me again.

--Arikado
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Unfortunately, he didn't take my advice and he emailed me again :/

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Once again, I am very sorry for the misunderstanding, and I am replying in humility and acceptance of my wrong-doing, but I would like to call upon the offer:

"I certainly don't mind you questioning my activities or pointing out a possible connection"

Would you mind telling me what is meant by the post "I'll tear his post apart when I wake up tomorrow :p" (refering to my product) on this page:

http://testing.lukegb.com/logviewer/index.php?action=viewlog&channel=%23wiihelp&datetime=1260918000

I am not asking this in accusative way, but just to settle my mind.

I really would like there to be no hard feelings between us and I hope this 'sour'ness will end (as deserved as it is).

-Robert
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I understood this reply as, "Hi! Just because I have no proof doesn't mean I'm not correct. I bet you can't explain this snippet IRC log from #wiihelp on EFNET from almost a little more then a month ago ;)"

My reply:

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That comment was made referring to this post http://forum.wiibrew.org/read.php?20,44369,44446#msg-44446 made by your forum member LordAshes in what appeared was an attempt to spam the WiiBrew Forums with your Wii Game Studio. "Tearing apart" specifically refferred to my style of using quotes to break up the post and respond to each point made individually.

--Arikado
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After sending my last response to fatquack, I have not received another e-mail from him. I'm truly disgusted by the lengths he is willing to go to just to have the final "ha-ha" at someone who posted something he didn't like a week or so back.

Lastly, as I've stated many times in this post, fatquack is illegally selling his product by failing to include the necessary GRRLIB and 7zip licenses in his distribution. They're simply two .txt files. It would take 5 seconds to add them to his distribution. But he refuses to because he clearly does not want to acknowledge their usage in his product.

Please everyone, join me in reporting fatquack's illegal product to paypal and shutting him down once and for all!