Dear April,

This is Lee Caldwell. I am the Director of Sales for BlackSnow Interactive. I think it would be a good idea for us to communicate in person or on the phone prior to us filing the lawsuit today. We gave a deadline of March 8th for Funcom to respond but were unable to file the lawsuit yesterday because our attorney was in court as was I. We do have every intention of filing the lawsuit today however.

The solution to our situation is extremely simple. Going to court will not be in the interest of Funcom or BlackSnow. Please contact me at 888-XXX-XXXX by 2pm PST today so that we can discuss the situation.

Thanks for your time.


Lee Caldwell
Director of Sales

From: "Andre Backen"
To: Lee Caldwell
Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 12:41 PM
Subject: Lawsuit

Dear Lee Caldwell

My name is Andre Backen and I am the President of Funcom Gmbh, a company based in Switzerland. Funcom GmbH is the owner of Anarchy Online and we operate under Swiss law. If you want to file a lawsuit against us that is at your discretion, however I want you to know that we have logs of your company's activities in AO.

We will raise counter claims against you for trying to destroy the gameplay for honest gameplayers and exploiting the game. When you lose the lawsuit in Switzerland you will be ordered to pay our legal cost, standard European procedure. We will in the case of lawsuit from you demand that you put such amount that our lawyer find necessary in to
an escrow account.

I look forward to this.

Andre Backen

From: Lee Caldwell
Sent: 13. March 2002 01:22
To: Andre Backen
Subject: Re: Lawsuit

Hello Andre,

It is nice to meet you virtually :) Let me start off by saying that we never wanted to file a lawsuit, which costs us a hell of a lot of money. I think that you should give us a fair hearing on this matter.

As I am sure you are aware, we filed an action against Mythic Entertainment. Please do not assume we are some casual players who can be threatened into submission with the cost of attorney's fees. We will fight in every way to protect our interests, just as I am very sure you will fight with every tool at your disposal to protect Funcom and your
interests. Your company is not coming into this situation with clean hands as you are being led to believe by your employee(s). We did nothing wrong and intend to do nothing wrong. Funcom has made some critical errors in operation regarding this matter. When we filed the lawsuit against Mythic, we immediately submitted a press release. In this case we have not done that and did not tell a single soul about this. April has contacted a fan site, IGN, and discussed the matter. Let me assure you Andre, this kind of publicity will in no way whatsoever hurt us, it will only boost sales for us. However, you have not been given the full story and we have documented proof of what occurred. My immediate recommendation to you is to inform your employees to not send this to any other reporters. This kind of publicity is not the kind that will help bring AO back to the level of game that it deserves to be. But you can do as you wish obviously.

With that said, I feel you should really hear us out. We would like to come to Switzerland and meet with you. You have no responsibility to do so. I believe you will find that we can help Funcom in some ways you never thought of. AND I AM NOT REFERRING TO THE SALES OF CURRENCY, ITEMS OR ACCOUNTS IN AO. We both know what the limitations are for Funcom to participate in those types of endeavours. We are a group of people who spend our lives around these games and we understand a lot more about the business aspect of them than you might think.

I am certain you would find our discussions in AO's best interests. You know absolutely nothing about us and it wouldnt hurt to spend a little time to learn what we are trying to do. All I ask is that you give us a small amount of respect and deal with us calmly and without throwing useless threats of legal fees that will be incurred. We will not file the lawsuit at this time, however we do reserve the right to do so at anytime.

I have tried to contact the phone number given to us by April, but did not receive an answer. I will of course try again later. If you wish to contact us, our Number is 714.XXX.XXXX

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I truly look forward to conversing with you in the future.

From: Andre Backen
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 10:00 AM
To: Lee Caldwell
Subject: RE: Lawsuit

Dear Lee,

The "threats" have come from you and we have simply responded. My marketing department received the attached letter via email from an attorney, Steven L. Krongold, of the law firm Arter and Hadden LLP, retained by your company. You were copied on this letter. The letter clearly states: "Please contact me by March 8, 2002. If I do not hear from you by this time, I must advise BSI to pursue its civil remedies against Funcom, including, but not limited to, recovery of civil damages for breach of contract, interference with economic advantage, and unfair business practices." We are aware of your lawsuit with Mythic and this letter shows your intention to take the same course of action with Funcom.

In addition, you personally stated in an email yesterday to April Jones, our US PR Manager: "We gave a deadline of March 8th for Funcom to respond but were unable to file the lawsuit yesterday because our attorney was in court as was I. We do have every intention of filing the lawsuit today however."

So now you say today that you never wanted to file a lawsuit. I'm sure you can understand my confusion.

Here are the facts. My company is taking a strong stand against players who cheat in Anarchy Online. We have a team of employees to track down players taking advantage of exploits and hacks. They then ban the accounts of players who are using them. In the regular course of banning all cheaters from our game, you say that 22 accounts that belong to employees of your company were banned. As I stated before, we have the
activity logs of those accounts. You then retained an attorney to tell us that if we did not reactivate those accounts, you would take us to court. We are simply saying that we will not reactivate those accounts. We will not reactivate any accounts that have been banned for using exploits and hacks. We do not want cheaters in our game.

We will not be bullied into changing the rules of our game by your legal threats. Legitimate players deserve the right to enjoy Anarchy Online in the way it was intended. If you would like to pursue legal action against us, that is your choice. We have simply responded to your threat and we know that the public, and specifically the AO community, will be on our side. No one likes cheaters.

I am certain you will keep me informed if you continue to plan on taking this further.

Andre Backen