WotC may have sent the Pinkertons to a magic leakers home. Update: WotC confirms it and has a response.

Homicidal_Squirrel said:

No, I never said it was heavy handed. Actually, I guess to be clear, I'm arguing that this was not as heavy handed as people are making it out to be.

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They sent armed guards to recover the cards. That's going to be intimidating whether WotC intended to intimidate or not. The optics on that are horrible. They'd have been much better off hiring Harry Dresden, PI and sending him to quietly talk to the guy and get the cards back.

Faolyn said:

I thought it was illegal to force someone to return something they had been sent by mistake?

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Who was forced?

Faolyn said:

So, that WotC did something of questionable ethics is somehow OK because the Pinkertons aren't the worst?

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I'm not sure WotC did anything wrong here. If the Pinkertons threatened someone with jail, okay, that's on the Pinkertons, and by extension, I guess some of that's on WotC as well for hiring them. But I'm not sure that's what happened.

People are honestly surprised a corporation acts like a corporation? They're not your friend, buddy or whatever. Anything else is just PR. Not the worst corporation but still a corporation.

MGibster said:

APA is so ugly and unprofessional looking to my eyes. Chicago Manual of Style for life, yo!

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As someone with an eclectic enough academic career to have written lengthy research papers in four different disciplines, each utilizing a different style guide, I feel well experienced to pass judgment in ranking, at least these four.

1) ASA
Sociology has adopted its own style guide, which is honestly just APA-lite. As such it's fairly simple but elegant; gets across what's needed and gets out of the way.

2) MLA
Ah, MLA, the style guide for the humanities, disciplines that don't even lay claim to such meager ambitions as "social science". MLA, the style guide for those who undertake research only grudgingly. It's quick, dirty, and to the point. I gotta respect it.

3) APA
APA recently underwent a massive revision that trimmed away a lot of the unnecessary fat. It's still incredibly clunky and behind the times as far as singular "they" goes, but it's not a terrible basis for a style guide.

4) A poke in the eye with a sharp stick
Highly unpleasant, painful even. Still, preferable to the below.

5) Pinkertons
The thing about the Pinkertons is that every historical atrocity that can be associated with them is... more than just historical. It's contemporaneous. You could take every negative assertion that starts "The Pinkertons were..." and replace the word "were" with "are" and remain completely accurate.

6) Chicago
Footnotes? Are you frakking kidding me? In-text citations are right there and you're coming at me with this garbage? Indefensible. Get over yourself, Chicago

jdrakeh said:

Jeezus. How did anybody at WotC or Hasbro think that this would play out well?

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Why is anyone upset about this?

Seriously. They sent a PI to contact a guy who they couldn't get ahold of who had some stuff he shouldn't have, that shouldn't be in the wild. Like even before we had the rest of the details...so what?

doctorbadwolf said:

Why is anyone upset about this?

Seriously. They sent a PI to contact a guy who they couldn't get ahold of who had some stuff he shouldn't have, that shouldn't be in the wild. Like even before we had the rest of the details...so what?

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If they could find out where he lived and dispatch people to that location, they could've found out what his phone number and other contact information was and had their legal department send a missive (this isn't a hypothetical - I used to skip trace people and it's dead simple to find this information). They didn't need to send hired muscle to the guy's house to intimidate him into handing over the cards. And they probably should've been more concerned with finding out how the guy got the merchandise in question, rather than dispatching hired muscle to secure the cards (I've also worked in PhysSec for more than a decade, including on government contracts, and this would've been where I focused my attention). How they handled this, from both a risk management and PR standpoint was not good.

Clint_L said:

WotC acted legally and responsibly. If, as this YouTuber later claimed, it was all a mistake, then he got what he always intended to purchase, and illicit goods were returned. Legally and ethically, I have zero problems with what occurred.

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But but WotC hurt my beloved D&D brand....

The director of security in hasbro used to work for...pinkerton.

jdrakeh said:

If they could find out where he lived and dispatch people to that location, they could've found out what his phone number and other contact information was and had their legal department send a missive (this isn't a hypothetical - I used to skip trace people and it's dead simple to find this information). They didn't need to send hired muscle to the guy's house to intimidate him into handing over the cards. And they probably should've been more concerned with finding out how the guy got the merchandise in question, rather than dispatching hired muscle to secure the cards (I've also worked in PhysSec for more than a decade, including on government contracts, and this would've been where I focused my attention). How they handled this, from both a risk management and PR standpoint was not good.

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Meh. They sent PIs to retrieve stolen product, and are replacing it with stuff the guy should have been able to purchase. People are blowing it out of proportion from there. Like sure they made a wild choice of agency to hire PIs from, but we also don't even know the details of the investigation, and whether they got information from him about how he acquired the cards, what else they're investigating, etc. Folks are just jumping to conclusions because it's fashionable to crap on wotc regardless of what they do.

The guy is literally better off than he was before the incident, as his viewershp has doubled, and he's probably going to get more from wizards than the value of what he originally purchased. this is a mole hill.

FallenRX said:

View attachment 282968

The director of security in hasbro used to work for...pinkerton.

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lol so the guy in charge of security called people he had worked with before to do a job he knew they could do?

Am i supposed to think this is a bad thing?