Wizards Of The Coast Reportedly Threatens Jail Time Against Player Who Was Accidentally But Legally Sold Upcoming Magic: The Gathering Set Ahead Of Official Street Date
Seemingly intent on taking home the title of ‘Worst Tabletop Company Of All Time’, Wizards of The Coast has reportedly responded to a Magic: The Gathering player being accidentally sold a booster box of the game’s upcoming set ahead of its official release by employing the services of a particular private security firm to forcefully recover the product.
Set to release on May 12th, March of the Machine: The Aftermath follows up its eponymous predecessor with a total of 50 new cards, each of which serve to not only expand players’ options in the game itself but also close out it’s current multiverse-altering storyline.
However, unfortunately for WotC but surprising for the player himself, a booster box of the upcoming set was accidentally sold to Magic: The Gathering YouTuber Dan “oldschoolmtg” Cannon roughly two weeks ahead of its release date.
In response, the publisher reportedly hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency – the very same private security firm who once patrolled the Wild West – to raid Cannon’s house and retrieve his legally purchased cards.
According to Cannon, who recalled his experiences in a YouTube video uploaded to his channel on April 22nd, “After I got done with the video [reviewing the March of the Machine: The Aftermath leaks], the dogs start barking because somebody’s knocking at the door, and my wife’s answering the door, and it was the Pinkertons.”
“They come knocking on the door to recover the ‘stolen product’ from Wizards of the Coast, which is of course the March of the Machine: The Aftermath sets,” he explained. “It wasn’t stolen product, to clear the record. As far as I know, nothing was stolen.”
“What I believe happened,” Cannon then speculated, “was that the names are too similar – March of the Machine and March of the Machine: The Aftermath – and somebody screwed up and sent out the wrong cases to the gentlemen I bought the boxes off of, because when he sold me the stuff he said he was selling me a March of the Machines collectors box, not Aftermath.”
“He’s not a Magic guy, he’s more a Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh guy, I believe,” the YouTuber added. “He just does all the card games. He didn’t know what Aftermath really was I don’t think, so I don’t think he stole anything. I think it was just he got the cases thinking they were March of the Machines , sold them thinking they were March of the Machines, I bought them thinking they were March of the Machines, and I didn’t know until after I had given him the money and opened the box and looked at the boxes inside that they were Aftermath.”
From there, Cannon said “The Pinkertons actually gave me a number to somebody at WotC who was asking them to have me call them. So I did, I called WotC, and talked to a gentleman there who was very nice and very apologetic about making my wife cry first thing in the morning by sending these lawmen to come collect stuff and talk about stolen products and jail time and all this other stuff.”
“They don’t believe that we stole anything, which we didn’t,” he remarked. “I don’t know if they believe anyone actually stole anything or if it was just an accident or whatever, but they wanted the product back so that they could try and figure out where the ‘hole’ was so that they could plug the ‘hole.'”
“Those were exactly what his words were to me,” the content creator continued. “He did apologize and they know that they took a lot of stuff that we had payed a lot of money for and he actually said that they are going to try and compensate us a little by sending us some other product and was asking me kind of what product I like and what not, so he seemed very nice. WotC is not being very rude about it or anything, they’re being very cordial, and apologizing that they had to go to drastic means by sending the Pinkertons to my front door, but they are asking if they can send me some product to make up for the loss of money, so we’ll see what happens with that.”
As for his aforementioned videos reviewing the Aftermath packs he had opened, Cannon noted, “I did take the videos down, as you’ve seen, and anybody who used my footage you’ll probably wanna take that down. They are saying it’s some kind of Copyright Infringement thing, so if you used my footage or took screenshots of my video or anything, you probably wanna remove that from your pages and from your sites.”
“They did ask me to ask everybody to take that down,” he elaborated. “Nobody asked me permission to use my footage, or else I would have told them you may not want to. I was uploading this stuff because I had it in my hand.”
Once more reiterating how, ” I really feel that there is no wrong doing on my behalf or either the gentleman I got them from. I could be wrong, but I really don’t think it was stolen. I think it was just a mistake down the line,” Cannon closed out his video by noting that, ultimately, “I no longer have the product.”
“The Pinkertons took everything to take back to WotC, so they now are in possession of the product,” he concluded. “They counted every single card and every single booster pack, I don’t even have any of the wrappers or that left. They took the empty boxes, the empty packs, everything. I don’t even have a token to show for my efforts there! It has been a crazy ride the last few days.”
Later speaking to Kotaku – who also received direct confirmation from WotC that they had hired the Pinkertons as “part of their investigation” – Cannon further revealed that the agents who showed up to his house “cited several statutes about copyright infringement and some other things threatening 1-10 years in jail and up to $200,000 in fines if I failed to cooperate.”
“They also said if I didn’t hand over the product, they would call the county sheriff and detain us until they arrived to arrest us and search my house for the product and that they would most likely force us to show receipts for every magic card in the house (which is literally over a million cards),” he added.
As of writing, Wizards of the Coast has yet to offer any further statement on the incident beyond their confirmation that they hired the Pinkertons.
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