Iron Realms is pleased to announce that we've just enabled a vast array of new payment options that will be especially helpful for our loyal customers outside of North America and those without credit cards generally who don't wish to wait for snail mail to reach us. You can now pay via methods ranging from bank transfer to Western Union Swiftpay to E-gold to Splash plastic, and many more, depending on what country you are paying from.

In order to see what payment methods are available to you (they differ by country), go to the Credits page for any of our games, and select "Other payment methods" as the payment method. You'll be taken to a website run by that will present you with a country-specific list of payment options.

Iron Realms is committed to bringing the best quality experience possible to our players and this is just another step in that direction. Hope you enjoy it!

--matt

Hi Valaria,

When you go to select your payment method at the bottom of the credit purchase page, there is a drop-down menu where you select from:
1. Credit/debit card
2. Check
3. Cash/money order
4. Other payment types

All the new methods are contained under "Other payment types", so just select that and then pick whatever option is most convenient for you after that. (It'll depend on where you live and how you want to send money.)

Hope that helps!

--matt

You're welcome!
--matt

Not to engender angry responses about how I'm picking on anyone, but I find this thread funny in a sad way, considering all of your MUDs advertise themselves as free.

New payment options on a free MUD! Awesome.

Nice to see you're capable of sticking to your crusade, regardless of how off-topic your posts are.

--matt

I'm sorry, I don't see how you can stretch your imagination to call that off-topic.  

Your subject: New ways to pay for your service.

My subject: Gosh, that makes your service not free.

They're directly related.  You don't even have to use any imagination to see it.  Anyway, as long as you persist in disingenuous labeling of your MUDs to draw new players, it's someones duty to point it out.

I don't know, that didn't seem off-topic to me.

It's definitely a shot at you, but it's an on-topic shot.

It's off-topic because it was an advertisement for new payment options. Our games being free, or your inability to comprehend any distinctions smaller than the size of the Grand Canyon, are irrelevant to the topic at hand. Your post was, quite obviously, just yet another lame attempt at flaming. I don't know what it is with your organization, but there are a couple of you from there that really enjoy attacking at every opportunity. It's just incredibly lame and it's that kind of rank amateur behavior that ends up ensuring that few people or organizations running text MUDs are taken seriously by the games community. I know Iron Realms is taken seriously, but it'd sure be nice if people running a medium-sized hobbyist MUD like Carrion Fields could step up and behave in a manner that's not going to just get more serious developers to roll their eyes at the constant inaneness.

--matt

It's because one of our favorite aspets of our game is that we're free. Personally, I don't think you can find a better free game anywhere - free as in money never has any affect on game play (unless you're going to cheat, as you pointed out before, which only works until we catch you and ban you). But then there are your games, that charge money to play on even footing with everyone else, or as Valg likes to call it "Wallet slap fights". And yet, you advertise yourselves as free, same as we do. I really don't think it's hard to see why that upsets us, and why we feel the need to point it out.

I'm sorry man, I would have to say you're the one with the rank amateur behavior that lowers the standards all around. Whenever we try to point out that your buisness practices are disingenuous, you jump up and down like a ten year old that had his matchbox car taken away. But seeing as you have a serious monetary interest in getting people to your MUD, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that you'll go to any lengths necessary, no matter how unscrupulous.

If you really wanted to end squabbling over this, all you have to do is be straight man.  Advertise your games as "pay for perks", like they are.

You obviously offer quality games, or people wouldn't play them.  Some people want to be able to pay cash to win at games.  What gets under my skin, personally, is the way you decieve in your advertising to get new people in the door.  When people glance at that list, they see all of the top MUDs advertising themselves as "free", when two of them are "pay for perks" and one of them is "free".

So, there you go.  In short, our problem is with your advertising practices, not your game or you. We'll stop hounding you as soon as you're straight with the people who come here looking for MUDs.

I usually stay out of this discussion but I just have to step in and say they ARE free to play.  I know this has been discussed for page after page after page on other threads, but come on already.  Matt has REPEATEDLY gone in-depth about industry standards and so forth and so on.  Bottom line is the games are FREE TO PLAY, as they advertise.  

I know some folks over at Carrion Fields are up on your high-horse about how you are free and other muds aren't.  Do you think that makes you better than the other games?  It's very surprising that after all this time and all this discussion for pages that you still want to bring this argument up.  

Iron Realms games, just like Medievia, are FREE to play.  Anyone can play their games without spending a cent.  Yes spending money will get things faster than if you didn't spend money, but the bottom line is that they are FREE TO PLAY.  Anyone, anywhere, can log in and play for free for as long as they want to.

I've always thought your arguments on this point were silly and just goes to prove that you don't understand the industry standards and advertising schemes in general.  Why on earth do you care so much about this when the list owners of both large MUD portals don't care enough to change their databases?  Let it go already....

I think he was staying on topic with a little bit of MUD-political satire, musing over the irony of a game that fights so hard to call itself free creating a thread with a subject called "New payment options w/ Iron Realms".

Surely, even if you have to so super-defensively reply in order to once again attempt to convince people here that Iron Realms is a "free game"(something that is obviously debateable in its own right, depending on your perspective and definition)... you still have to see the satirical humor in your subject, considering your reputation and consistant argument within the community. C'mon.

There's no "high horse" involved. I'm sorry, I thought I was clear when I said they obviously have fine games, or else people wouldn't play. I also said there are obviously players that prefer a model that lets them pay for perks. At the same time, there are players that want to play a game for free, where money doesn't play a part.

There's no way for us to advertise ourselves as more then "Free" (adding ten exclamation points and an @ symbol after it doesn't count). And yet despite the very clear difference between our two game models, they persist on advertising themselves as "Free" as well.

They're not lying outright, which makes it even worse. You CAN play for free, until you discover that people are laying out money to get ahead of you. Then you have to decide if you want to stay behind the pack, or shell out money too. What I've said, over and over, is that it's disingenuous.

There is clearly value to a game being "free", or else we wouldn't all list it prominently. By labeling "pay for perks" games as "Free", you're taking away from the value of OUR game (not to mention the many other free MUDs), which doesn't involve money in any way.

I think any reasonable person should be able to see why this upsets us. Let me know if I'm not being clear, I'll be happy to go on.

You are perfectly clear and I totally understand where you are coming from. My question was and is that if the owners of both topmudsites and mudconnector don't think enough of the issue to change their databases listing options, why bring up the argument again and again? After that whole long thread of coming up with new options for listings and nothing happening to change the status quo, why just not drop it?

It just seems to me that some people just attack for the sake of attacking the bigger games. Yes I understand your argument, but your argument has been heard time and time again, to no result. Same with the arguments and attacks against Medievia... you can argue and argue, but nothing is going to change the fact that we are a large game with a large playerbase, steadily growing. Iron Realms is not going to change their advertising scheme just because you don't like their definition of Free.

The owners of topmudsites and mudconnector stand too much to lose money-wise from Iron Realms pulling their expensive and aggressive advertising policy with the two sites. There is pretty public knowledge of the threats and insinuations made by Matt - whose condescending, conniving, and non-community supporting rhetoric is 90% of the reason your organization has a bad name with a lot of the MUDing community. It has nothing to do with the size of your game for most(and at least myself). He can bully his way into being allowed to advertise his products as free on resource sites, even when there are far more accurate models to describe them as. It is his right. It is our right to consistantly call him out on it.

As long as there is a need for change, people who are progressive and active will continue to push. If an activist or lobbyist gives up on his ideals, then he is not showing enough conviction. It has nothing to do with attacking again and again just for the sake of being offensive.

Again, as far as Iron Realms goes, the source of community issues with it stems from Matt's attitude, bullying, condescension, and general lousiness in most of his dealings with the community, including constant subtle, underhanded cheap shots at smaller MUDs, as-if Varg(or any other MUD Admin) would actually feel bad about such comments when Carrion Fields is obviously doing great for a 100% Free MUD and Iron Realms uses a more commercial model to acquire its playerbase.

I'm sure Soleil, that you are capable enough to step back and see the issues at hand. You can't expect people who want to see the right thing done to be quieted by a single company(and CEO) who thinks its self-importance outweighs an entire international gaming community. And before you accuse me of trying to be the voice of the whole community, my counter-point is that, in-fact, I was merely pointing out that Iron Realms' dedicated players/employees seem to be the only ones to ever defend your side of the argument on the community resource-site forums.

Medievia is even less "free" than the Iron Realms games. As much as I dislike the IRE payment model, at least it supports an in-game system allowing players to trade their credits. Some player somewhere has still got to pay for your super bonuses, but the game at least provides you the means to trade with them, earning the bonuses at the expense of someone else. It is generally upon this basis that the IRE supporters put forth their claim of being 'free' - the fact that an individual player can reach full potential without personally having to pay anything.

Your mud, however, , meaning that each player is personally required to pay in order to compete with the paying customers and their .

Well, to be nitpicky, each player does not personally have to pay. Many players do donation deals with others in exchange for in-game gold and/or equipment. In addition, there are other ways of earning donation eq credit such as publishing articles in the Mudslinger newspaper. There are some heros that have not ever paid a cent for their eq yet have full sets. So to say that each player is required to pay is false.

A phrase that no free MUD can honestly use.

This phrase was preceded by the following:

It is itself followed by this:

And this:

Matt, could you be any more of a hypocrite?  I might add that being taken seriously only means that they recognize you make money, not that you're a responsible professional.  Enron was taken seriously too.  We all know what kind of people were running that company.

But since you do want to advertise your new billing options on your "free" MUDs, why not do so on your listing instead of on the forums?  More people will see them and they can't just hit reply and post a response.  Here are some suggested editorial changes to the listings for three of your games (changes in bold):

Take care,

Jason

I must say, his reply was on topic. I also foud it quite ironic to see this post on a supposid "site for free MUDs". While I have no doubt that Iron Realm games are free to play initially, and you want to get in on that criteria, fine. But, come on, you have to see the irony in calling your players "customers". That in itself iby definition is "One that buys goods or services".

Maybe you should have chosen a better post tile? and maybe not be so defensive, you came off quite irate and defensive to the point that you were the one that scared me. You went on to insult other muds, like somehow IR games are better? That you've risen above a hobby MUD? That somehow because a programmer chooses to code for a mud other that IR they are inferior? I've got news for you, there are a lot of programmers ou there in this MUD world that are hundreds time better that the best at IR.

Maybe you should check yourself before you go insulting the entire MUD community. No wonder all my players HATE IR games with a passion I've never encountered on the internet before in my 20 years.

Tank

What "site for free MUDs?" I know that's not TMS or TMC... maybe you meant that IRE labels themselves as "free to play."

As I've said before, those of you that don't believe their particular games are "free to play" probably haven't played them for a long time. I have, and did so without spending money and never felt that I was at any real disadvantage. If I wanted a skill or artifact, I worked for it and got it.

The main issue with this whole arguement is, both sides are argueing different things. IRE says "free to play" which they are. The other side argues that they are not "free" which they are not. Apples and oranges.

As for the comment that they do nothing for the community, they are advertising in places most games could not afford too. Some of those new players they generate vote here, some of them may decide to try another game... which would mean... they are generating new players for ALL muds. Sure, they get the majority of those players, and probably do it only for themselves, but the fact stands that it does brings new players into the community.

Great. What of my favorite aspects of our games is that we're better than Carrion Fields. That is my opinion, just like what you said is your opinion. What, exactly, makes it ok for you to disrupt threads just so you can put forth your opinion? Should other people disrupt any thread started by Carrion Fields to point out that Carrion Fields sucks in their opinion? Just as valid as an opinion as yours, and yet it's almost exclusively Carrion Fields who seems to engage in this kind of lame CONSTANT flaming.

If you'd look around a bit, you'd quickly realize that the way we use free is the industry standard. What you do is just demonstrate your total lack of engagement with the games industry, preferring to try to set your own standards and impose them on other people.

Attacking people constantly because you disagree with what is both an absolutely solid legal and ethical use of the word, is just lame. It's crap like this that drives talent away from text MUDs, since when you see people engaging in the constant attacks that you guys do (and there is no denying that Carrion Fields staff engages in a lot of unprovoked attacks. This thread is a perfect example of that) they just write off text MUDs generally as amateur hour.

And that ****es me off.

--matt

Really? Which site did I post on that is for free MUDs? This is a site for MUDs generally, from the humblest DIKU clone to World of Warcraft, if they chose to participate. It is, further, a commercial site. It's ironic to whine about commercialism on a site that is itself commercial.

They are, in fact, free to play, forever. There is no denying that you can play our games, forever, for free. You can argue all you want about whether you participate on equal footing with people who can spend money, but we don't advertise anything regarding that. We advertise ourselves as free to play, and it is indisputably true. It's also completely legal, and, as I've pointed out over and over, it is the games industry standard use of the word.

That's right, because I choose to think of them all as customers and treat them as such instead of dividing them into customer and non-customer players.


I didn't insult other MUDs. I insulted Aarn, who launched an unprovoked attack against me. I don't care about "better". Better is completely in the eye of the beholder. What I AM certain of is that the Carrion Fields developers are the single most aggressively jerkish developers I've ever encountered, at least judging by Valg and Aarn. The kind of unprovoked attacks they make would get them banned from any game developer's chapter.




Again, I don't care about better. I care about making text MUDs that people want to play. You can judge our success or lack thereof for yourself, I don't care.


Where precisely did I insult the entire MUD community? If you got that idea, you've got it wrong. I have no opinion one way or another about "the MUD community" except that I'd like to see it grow, and the kind of insular, hate-driven posts that derailed this thread to begin with are written by the kinds of people who are the problem. If they just opened their eyes a bit, educated themselves about what the standards really are, they might learn something, but instead their main interest is just attacking like rabid dogs.

I'm just glad that TMS and TMC are run by folk who do have an understanding of the rest of the world.

--matt

Rules for commercial advertising in the US are set by the FTC. Why not file a complaint with them if you think we're engaging in dishonest advertising? They are, after all, the ones who make the rules.

Or, why not complain to Synozeer? He runs this site. He appears to endorse our usage of the word free, or at least not object to it. In fact, it appears to just be the same handful of out-of-touch people who object. Same old crowd. Same old attacks. As usual, the result will be that nothing will change, because nobody with any power is going to do anything based on their illogical whining.

--matt

Unless of course you've been granted the right to claim what's ethical, your statement isn't very objective. Oh wait, maybe you were, since you have attacked other MUDs as unethical in the past while welcoming the likes of Medthievia to TMS.

They write off text MUDs as "amateur hour" because a great many of them suck. Of course, the gaming industry ought to seriously reconsider that since the vast majority of people involved in it produce crap just in different forms, be it text-based or graphical, and "amateur hour" could very well describe the entire industry.

What really ****es you off is that not everyone is willing to sit idle and let you lie about your games or put up with your consistent belittling of "hobbyist" MUDs or your attacks on anything you perceive as a threat to your own games. You're a hypocrite that whines, connives, and lies in order to promote the best interest of his own commercial MUDs at the expense of the community. And that's what ****es us off.

Take care,

Jason

the_logos:
That's funny, I thought last week you were saying ad hominem attacks were bad.  

It's easy for anyone who looks to see how these threads always devlove into irrational name calling once the_logos gets to say his piece.  I specifically said, in this thread, that you ran fine games (twice), and that I wasn't going after you or your game personally.  I just want you to advertise honestly.  You respond with personal attacks against me and Valg, and call our MUD crappy.  Then you have the gall to talk about unprovoked attacks?  For shame.

Well, carry on matt.  I'm sure the reasonable folk that read this thread will see what you're doing clearly.  It's easy to avoid a valid issue when you can devolve the whole thing into name calling.

They are bad, but I'm also not going to sit here and just let you fire constant unprovoked attacks.
Excuse me? YOU said that we are dishonest in our marketing. YOU launched a completely unprovoked attack that took this thread completely off-topic, and after many instances of Carrion Fields folk doing that, I had enough and fired back. Deal with it.

--matt

I assume you've got proof of these lies, or are you just engaging in libel, which is both unethical and illegal? The latter wouldn't surprise me at all, given the source.

God, this is so dumb. It's just the same bunch of fringe types complaining, on so many threads on TMS, inanely bringing up the exact same topics over and over on issues that are, to the vast majority of the community, settled. Swim out of that little pond and join the rest of the world.

--matt

For the sake of space, we'll limit examples to just your last post (and the lie at the root of the problem)...it would take far too long to just list all those in this discussion alone....

Whining:
Conniving:
Lying (see also Conniving):
A hypocrite:

Claiming you don't insult others, which you have claimed on several occassions, usually accompanied by additional claims of being a representative of the MUD community...
Let me add another example belittling others:


Take care,

Jason

Not settled by the vast majority of the community? Let's see...within text MUDs, some of the largest text MUDs use it this way, TMS allows this usage of free, TMC allows this usage of free. Within the community generally games like Runescape (advertised as free to play) have more players by themselves than all text MUDs put together. Google is also on our side.

Oh, and again, the Federal Trade Commission is on our side. Who is on yours again? I've seen a few forum posters. That's it. Seems pretty accurate to say that it's a settled issue. I'm not aware of any lawsuits or legal challenges to this version of the word free. Are you? I've shown you many large, influential organizations (and in one case - the FTC - THE organization whose say matters) who agree with us. Heck, you're even posting on a community site that permits free as used by us.

So who is on your side? I keep asking this of people who argue about this, but oddly, I never get an answer back or I get vague handwaving about "silent masses" and whatnot (nevermind that the silent masses patron games and services that use 'free' as we do in far far greater numbers than anything in text MUDs).

--matt

Why, oh why do you anti-"play for perks" folks always take the bait??  the_logos knew that when he posted this thread that the same ol' people would immediately start flaming him.  Of course the thread is now 4 pages long (so far), & was so successful that he has posted another "bait thread".  If you folks would just shut up with the bitching, the_logos posts would disappear a lot faster.  Course, I've just extended the thread myself, but please, this same argument has been played out over & over, & nothing's changed. IRE is not going to change, so why bother...

Your advice that they stop bitching and moaning as it accomplishes nothing is right on, but this was most certainly not a bait thread. Opening up new international payment options is a big thing for us and a big thing for international players that choose to spend money with us. Given how many players we get from TMS, such a large development seemed quite worthy of an announcement. I'm sorry if some people are unable to restrain themselves, but in the end, it's really their problem and it just makes them look silly and fringe.

--matt

I think that the fact that IRE has to be nitpicky in order to justify its claims of advertising itself in the same way that true, completely always-free-to-play MUDs do is what causes the issues to begin with.

As for the rest of the posts this evening; I'll re-summarize and make it simple.

Matt - the only people who ever support you are IRE staff/players. You have a lot of people from different MUDs who are against you. I have played a lot of MUDs(an insane amount of varying MUDs, actually), and IRE is largely disliked - Achaea in particular. It is not fictional, and it is not a "fringe minority". It is the general perception of IRE by a lot of people. A lot.

Matt - you are, indeed, condescending to "hobbyist MUDs", self-important, conniving, bullying, and many other things which is why very few people here seem to like you. Infact, other than Vryce, the wide and consistant responses to you on these forums tend to make me think that you're one of the two least liked admins in the MUDing community. There's probably a reason for that - and it is not success, because other similarly successful MUDs don't have exactly the same problem.

Matt - your post begged for these on-topic replies involving how ironic you referring to your players as customers while calling your product free truly is. Really, all of the defensiveness and IRE player-rallies in the world cannot deny that. IRE'd probably be a lot more successful if you self-medicated more, got struck by lightning, got audited and lost your house, or some other humbling event to put things into a less self-centered and condescending perspective.

In the end, people continue to bring up the same points again and again because they are worth bringing up - even if Syno forever bows down to Matt's insinuated, and sometimes blatant bullying and weight-throwing, they are still worth bringing up so that the newer and less vocal members of the community are aware that there is a very negative connotation implied with IRE and Matt. Much like Midievia and Vryce, with the only line-in-the-sand being the technicality of legality versus ethics.

We are completely free to play. If they want to distinguish themselves by adding that they don't accept optional payments, that's fine. That's their choice. What they don't get to do is redefine the word 'free' to mean only the cases they choose them to mean.

Odd. The TMS administrator seems to support me, and it has nothing to do with our advertising here. He's just a reasonable guy and doesn't get caught up in these crusades certain forum members do. He also realizes that the forum members who are doing the complaining are not representative of the users of the site as a whole, or at least, that's what I'd guess.

You go on to say that some forum members don't like me, wish that I could be struck by lightning, etc etc, but as that's irrelevant to Iron Realms and myself, I'll leave it at that.

Laughable, considering it is widely known on TMS and TMC that you've threatened to pull advertising/listing if changes are made that do not allow IRE to advertise itself as free in the same way. You can't really say something and then pretend it didn't happen. I mean, you can certainly try, but I suppose us "crusaders" (funny, considering what I do) will just remind forum users of your open manipulation of site administration to get what you want.

Thanks Jono. It is indeed pretty incredible, but they seem determined.

And yeah, in the end, what they do is pretty much just them blowing in the wind, but their inanity gets annoying sometimes. I know we're doing at least a pretty good job because the MUD community continues to support us in ever greater numbers, but there's always room for improvement, of course, and that is what this thread was originally about: An improvement.

--matt

Yes - I am glad that your customers now have an improved and more flexible way of paying you. Good job Iron Realms. : )

So, I assume you have some evidence to back up your accusation. Let's see it. My guess? You're just another schmuck making another baseless attack. Quite honestly, if I have ever made that kind of threat, I don't recall it.

You wrote:
No, you're right, I can't. You sound pretty sure. Show me the evidence. Show us all. Embarass me.

You just made a serious accusation. Assuming it's not true (my memory isn't perfect, certainly, but I am fairly sure I have never made such a threat), you've made a statement you have no reason to believe is anything but false (as evidenced by the fact that you have no evidence), with malicious intent and intent to harm my and Iron Realms' reputation. That is libel, and that is illegal.

It never fails to amaze that some people will sink to these depths.

Now, if you actually have real evidence I will apologize profusely to you on these very forums, because I'm happy to admit I'm wrong when convincingly demonstrated as such.

I hope that if you're unable to show that what you're accusing us of is indispurtably true, you will extend the same courtesy of a profuse apology to me.

--matt

You know, why is it some of you can't accept any interpretation of anything but your own? I mean that seriously. I'm willing to accept Valg calling Carrion Fields 'professional', for instance, even though according to my definition, being good at something doesn't make you professional (I'm a good skier, but that doesn't make me a professional unless I do it for money, in my opinion). Why is it that you're so hostile to the idea that the same word can have multiple meanings, especially when, as I've pointed out, the way we use it is pretty darn standard?

Seriously, can any of you give me a reasonable, non-hostile answer to that?

--matt

I've never cared for pay-to-play muds, but then that's just not my style. Clearly there are people who don't mind, otherwise they wouldn't still be around.


What I do mind is people bitching and moaning back and forth at eachother for the same damn thing over, and over, and over again. My God, people, don't you realize you're fighting about the exact same thing in every single one of the forums on this board?

Grow up. If Matt wants to run his mud for money, it's none of your business.

Matt, you really need to stop stooping to their level by fighting back with them.

Umm ... I'm neither, and I agree with/support him.  And there are more than a few of us who do, we just USUALLY don't get involved in your stupid BS postings about this topic.

Well in (roughly) the last 4 months on this site only, I count only about 18 different accounts posting on topics berating IRE about "free to play", agreeing with you.  Now, as a proclaimed professional and consultant, you MUST be aware that 18 people does not a "lot of people" make.

As you used it, the following definitons from Merriam Webster.

customer: "a person or business that purchases a commodity or service"

purchase: "to obtain by paying money or its equivalent, or to obtain by labor, danger, or sacrifice"

Seems to me that's what everyone does who plays any game, even all of the so-called "free to play" ones.  After all, everyone is sacrificing their time and doing labor to play any game.  Seems like a good professional way to me to treat the people that come play your game, whether they pay money or not.

So what's your point SirTank, how is he saying two contradictory things with that statement?

Well, actually... you'd have to prove malicious intent(which is not the case, I merely am encouraging you to act more responsibly within the community), worth of civil damages(as libel is a civil suite only), and that what I am saying is published false(truly not likely to be proven, as forum messages can be edited by their writer at any time, and I could easily argue that you simply could have found the posts in question and removed/edited the targetted material). Never-the-less, to humor you, I will search for the specific post that I remember seeing not long after I joined this forum.

And if you are going the route of using the forum's "terms of agreement" against me as a non-civil and more theoretical form of libel, I'll just throw out the fact that you break the terms all the time. Example; defamation by way of public insult/bashing, i.e. calling someone a schmuck. This, amongst many other condescensions originating from you.

Don't try to get technical and/or legal. It's not only pointless - it's kind of sad.

I just wanted to add...

Its the typical "Lets hate the big-guys syndrome", where everyone hates the bigger, more successful company.
For example, Microsoft... (Everyone liked Microsoft when it came out... now everyone seems to hate it to its core)
...And now Google, where issues have arisen with how they have dealt with the whole google.cn thing, and not to mention the possible privacy violations.

Not true - other larger, more successful games are not being criticized for their ethics in these forums. More than IRE's, I disapprove of other models such as Simutronic's. I don't openly attack their ethics here because they aren't twisting commonly recognizable ideas and phrases to make them seem like something they aren't within the community, and because they don't openly condescend MUDs on this site who choose not to attempt to squeeze money out of their players for benefits.

Matt's attitude, threats, condescension, and questionable ethics are why he(and by default, Achaea and IRE) are commonly targetted.