Magic to Master dev threatens to sue Gameforge, cancels Kickstarter, and releases new trailer

June 30, 2023 12:30 PM

Laniatus LLC, the company that’s trying to revive 2009’s Magic to Master, continued to make headlines a couple of weeks ago when Gameforge hit the company with a DMCA strike over M2M’s alleged use of stolen assets from its title Metin2. The strike subsequently took the M2M Kickstarter and YouTube channel offline, but as of today, the YouTube channel is back online and Laniatus is rattling its saber as it vows to fight the claim with legal action.

“Our company has been unequivocally informed that the allegations made by the concerned company have infringed upon our rights and misrepresented our brand. This malicious company continues to fabricate unfounded claims and engage in baseless accusations. Nevertheless, Laniatus LLC stands firm in its resolve to fight back against such false allegations and intentional misrepresentations. We have immediately initiated legal action to protect our corporate identity and hold accountable the individuals responsible for these violations.”

The post goes several paragraphs deep into an extremely combative and accusatory stance: It calls the DMCA takedown unjust, crows about its resolute stance “against allowing falsehoods and misrepresentations,” accuses Gameforge of “leveraging innocent YouTubers” to enrich itself, and states that its “real lawsuit” will “set an example for all natural and legal persons who are victims of false accusations and defamation.” We note here that Laniatus has threatened lawsuits against multiple companies throughout this entire mess; to date, we have seen no evidence that it’s actually filed any of them.

The post further claims that Gameforge inadvertently promoted Laniatus, providing the company “various factors that contributed to [its] success” like a partnership with AI and data processing company AI10 and the claim of “a substantial number of inquiries from various content creators who have expressed interest in acquiring the publishing rights” for M2M. However, as MMORPG.com notes, AI10 is a brand-new company with little online history and a website riddled with broken links, and none of these content creators were actually identified in the post.

The announcement finally closes with word that it will be sending an opportunity to a “select group of individuals” to try out M2M, followed by what reads like a later closed test for the first 1,000 people who sign up. Dates and details on both of these playtests were not elaborated on.

Meanwhile, as mentioned earlier, the game’s YouTube channel is back, complete with a new cinematic that sets M2M’s scene as “a new enemy threaths [sic] our world.” The game’s Kickstarter, we note, is still offline as of this story’s writing. And even if it does get its Kickstarter back, they aren’t going to attempt crowdfunding again, and have listed the original drive as canceled:

“We are excited to announce that our YouTube and Kickstarter campaign pages will soon be back in operation. We are in the countdown to the reactivation of our platforms. However, we have made the decision to permanently remove our Kickstarter campaign from the platform even after we have cleaned it up. This decision reflects our commitment to protecting the interests and trust of our community of supporters.”