I'd like to say upfront that after reading three… THREE separate posts about this on Kotaku, I've grown a little sick of the whole issue. To be honest, I got into games journalism because of places like Kotaku, but when they go so far as to google the guy to dig up more dirt for their front page, I start skipping over it in my bookmarks bar.
That said, the original source, Penny Arcade, posted a quick update on the issue surrounding Ocean Marketing and their treatment of a customer purchasing the Avenger controller accessory. Apparently, Paul sent some final e-mails in desperation. I've never read anything that sounded more like a broken man, destroyed by the all-knowing eye of Sauron the internet.
You have the power Mike Please make it stop.
Within the hour, Paul sat down to write a more complete apology for his behavior:
Hey Mike,
I just wanted to apologize for the way our emails progressed I didn’t know how big your site was and I really didn’t believe you ran Pax , So for what’s its worth I am very sorry. Your post has obviously made my life very difficult and I have not slept yet dealing with all the spam and personal information intrusion as well as my family being smeared on the internet.
If you can please accept my apology and anything you can do to help if not me my son and wife please do. I have apologized to Dave and apologized to you what else can I do please tell me so I can make things good. I obviously care or I would not be emailing you.
This kind of stuff will make me think twice before I berate you fools of GameRevolution dear readers.
Nick Tan, god bless his vacation-enjoying soul, passed along an e-mail received from the Avenger controller people themselves which reads (unedited):
Please know that Ocean Marketing is no longer handling any PR or customer service for our company. We apologize to our customers for Ocean Marketing's remark to one of our customers. We at Kotkin Enterprises know that it's our customers that are the true arbiters of our products sucess and we would never intentionally jeopardize what we see as a relationship between us and our customers. We hope that this incident hasn't put you off of purchasing a truly revolutionary controller.
Now let that be that. What's done is done. Hopefully everyone will find peace by the new year.
