Skylanders “Hacker” Gets Cease and Desist Letter from Activision

An enterprising gamer named Brandon Wilson who managed to crack open the portal-base and figures of Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure, the collectible toy-video-game from Activision, has received a cease and desist letter from the company, demanding that he remove his findings from his website immediately.

Wilson, according to a post on Joystiq, was simply experimenting with the device’s RFID technology, which reads different figures’ chips to import them into the game. Activision, though, had accused him of “intending to share his findings with others,” and to “circumbent the game […] with an iOS device.” But to avoid the legal muscle of one of the biggest gaming corporations in town, Wilson has complied with the letter and taken his findings down from the web—even though the majority of the actual stuff of his findings were saved in a zip file for himself, and not widely distributed.

It would seem to me—a non-expert in the world of legalese—that Wilson has every right to do whatever he wants. As long as he’s not making a profit or denying the company its own profits (a determination which itself is a slippery slope of speculation anyway), I would imagine he’s all in the clear.

Oh, lawyers.

Via Joystiq

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