This is a special ‘heads up’ announcement to give you an early warning of our upcoming sale.
On February 15th EST Dugi Guides will have a Half-off (50% discount) sale of ALL our guides and packages for ONE DAY ONLY.
This is to remember the one year anniversary of The Day that Zygor Came
The short story behind it…
Before we created our own addon, Dugi Guides used an Open Source software called TourGuide which served as the addon to read our guides in-game.
We had written permission from the author to use the TourGuide addon commercially and we supported the author with donations.
Then about this time 2010 a small gnome by the name of Zygor and his lawyer came to our doorstep and filed a DMCA notice, claiming that he is now the owner of TourGuide and demanded that Dugi Guides pay damages of $75,000 USD or else we will face a much bigger lawsuit of $150,000 per Copyright Infringement + legal costs.
We discovered later that the ownership rights of TourGuide was sold to Zygor a couple of months earlier for a undisclosed sum of money.
Zygor then removed all distribution of TourGuide from other websites such as Curse and WoWInterface which prevented anyone from downloading TourGuide. Without the ability to download TourGuide from anywhere our users were unable to use our guides with TourGuide, which also prevented us from selling our guides.
Dugi Guides would have still been able to distribute TourGuide but we took the matter very seriously and we were forced to close our store for about 3 weeks until we finished creating our own addon and were absolutely certain about our position.
During this time the folks from Zygor posted announcements in their newsletter, forum publicly stating that their intentions with TourGuide was to implement it with their addon and nothing else. Zygor claimed that Dugi Guides was breaking the law and they are just following proper legal procedure and the threats from their lawyer continued to come.
Zygor himself also continued to spread false statements in our own forum and blog by posting under several different names which we later discovered.
Once we were given the all clear from our lawyer, we posted all the facts and clearly proved that we were within our right to distribute TourGuide as it was an Open Source software and that we have permission from the author.
What happened since then…
Our deadline to pay $75,000 to Zygor was 31st March 2010 and we didn’t give them a single dime. Zygor and his lawyer were never heard from again since our last statement.
Zygor never implemented TourGuide with their own addon.
TourGuide was made available to the public again without any announcement.
Zygor removed all the defamatory statements against Dugi Guides from their forum.
Zygor made no statements to defend any of his actions against Dugi Guides
We also believe that Zygor no longer owns the rights to TourGuide and TourGuide has been returned back to the original author and it is currently no longer updated or used.
Moving on…
I have to admit the entire event came as a shock and was very distressing to us, something like this has never happened to us before and we didn’t know how to handle it. We were a relatively small company VS a company that was about 5x times bigger than us that had disposable income for Lawyers and buying out TourGuide. We fought back by involving the public so that our customers knew what was going on. I believe that the support we received and the backlash towards Zygor, helped play a part in their decission to back away.
But we were also glad it happened because it was a major turning point for our company. All the support from the public really drove us to work harder.
We have moved on since then but we will highlight this event once a year until we receive some form of public acknowledgement from Zygor that their actions were wrong.
What can you do to help…
We believe that a large company like Zygor should fulfill their corporate responsibility and behave in an ethical manner. Without smaller companies like Dugi Guides offering alternative products then the consumer loses out. Innovations suffer and Zygor could continue to charge $100 for their leveling guides.
No matter how good their products are, it should be clear that their actions will not be tolerated and not something that they can sweep under the rug to forget about.
The money spent on TourGuide and Lawyers could have been better spent on improving their products or passed on as savings to their customers or other positive causes.
You can help by not supporting Zygor Guides and sharing this article and try to get a real explanation from Zygor regarding their actions towards Dugi Guides.
The long story behind it…
The complete archive of everything that happened is documented in our Blog here.
But I have to warn you its really long… you should start from the first article at the bottom, there is a lot of information in the comments section as well.
Thank you for reading!
Be sure to take advantage of our Half-off (50% discount) sale of ALL our guides and packages on February 15th
Yours Truly
Dave Farrell (Dugi)
77 replies to "The Day that Zygor Came (One Day Sale)"
i do hope your not giveing everything away to get cash to fight this because ill just give you money to fight it have you thought of that im sure a lot of people would agree with me the little man has had enough dont let them get to you your a good man peter j kelly
well ive got both guides and i have to say Dugi,s is the best the so called zygorip off is juat a joker i hope you can and will stand up to the so called big bissness people like zygorip off will soon learn that they cant just do what ever they want because they have money and a smart lawer, i bet i could find things in zygoripp off guides that you could thke him to court im trying to get my money back off zygoripp off as his guides are a rip off they point you in the wronw way to go its very hard to use not like your guides so good luk to you and me hang in there a lot of people out here belive in you not this ripp off man Peter j kelly
Hi Dugi
I’ve been with you for a good while now and have always liked your stuff. I remember that bad time with Zygor and stuck by you and your Guide – I knew you’d come good.
You’re right how sometimes being the Under Dog helps you focus and re-double your efforts and I think you now have a better product for it – even with all the legal threats…I hope the stress was worth it!!
BTW: I didn’t take the opportunity to buy anything at 50% discount cuz I think I already have everything! 😀
Keep up the good work, mate!
Cheers
Nobsworth
Hi Dugi,
I have to say that I think your guides are the absolute best and your customer service is excellent. I have had problems with large companies and know what you must have gone through. I fully support you and your right to publicly defend your good name against Zygor. I wish you all the best. Happy Zygor Day a little late.
Love your guides. Love your service. Love that you fought back.
Hi Dugi, I wanted to let you know that I published a blog post to publicise this event at
**
Good to contact you, hope you like the post 🙂
TGQ
thank you for your post Gold queen, but we can’t approve links to affiliate website. I hope you understand.
Absolutely, hope it helps you anyway 🙂
Hey dugi,
Are you saying that people have to purchase every guide that you have in order to get the 50% discount?
If so then you could have made that clearer. I own about 90% already and I was hoping to get a discount on what’s left to purchase.
Regards Anthony.
Ps dugis customer has to be better that zygors,
He has helped me in the past with addons that had nothing to do with him.
Customer service*
no you can purchase the guide seperately, the discount is for individual guide and packages.
Good man dugi!!
I’ve “seen” Zygor’s ****. Zygor’s is the epitmoe of “wow, I’m SOOOOOO glad I didn’t pay for that ****”. I thought their guides were terrible. I’m SOOOOOOO glad I didn’t pay for that ****. 😉
Things like that is also why I gave a great deal of thought before buying Dugi’s Guide. Like, 3 months of thought. Best addon I’ve ever installed. EVER. And yeah, I’m going to miss out on this sale because I already made the purchase. That still doesn’t change the fact it was money well spent on my part, and I stand behind that. And UWG.
I’ve used Zygor, liked it. I then tried Dugi guides, far better, the best! Have all the Alliance guides, will get your Horde guides Tue.
As a note I reported a pirate of Zygor guides to Zygor. I even provided all the evidence needed to take the pirate to court, and win. I didn’t even get a thank you. Now is that sorry, or what?
Robb
Its my option and not Dugis on the comments I made.
I used Zygors guide.s from 2007 up till 2010 as well as Dugis maybe Zygors was a bit more polished than Dugis buy contents where about the same.
The Major Different was CUSTOMER SERVICE and the issue is not who gave the refund but the unprofessional comments he make by Zygor to CITY BANK about the re-fund
ZYGORS TO CITY BANK
(> Wanted a free guide, takes advantage of the ClickBank system. Please do not
> allow this person to purchase ClickBank products in the future, to save other
> vendors from fraud. Thank you.) witch are highly libel going to contact legal advise)
I sent copy to City Bank (same copy as Colin says Feb 10 2011) they replied case closed
so I suggest you look more closely at his sales tactics
I used Zygor before I knew about Dugi. There was a whole fiasco when the “In-Gmae Guide” came out and many people with the old guides had to pay twice for the same product. I called him on it in the forums. when I went to login later to see his response I noticed that my account was terminated. Checked my email to find that I had a message telling me I had “violated the terms of my membership.” There was no profanity in my message… it was very straight-forward and logical. Bottom line: Zygor is a jerk and no one should support him or his back-stabbing ways.
Hi Dugi,
I am glad everything turned out ok for you guys, I am not an owner of many guide, but for now its perfect for me, for sure though i will be there the 15th to buy some!
I didn’t know Zigor, actually i only know your guides :), i don’t feel the need to check anywhere else anyway, you have great prices and they are very easy to use. ( And i’m sorry for my sloppy english writing, its not my first language! :P).
Thank you
Dugi – you have great guides – great customer service – bringing your case to the public and letting Zygor know if that if he screws with you – the power of the internet is much stronger then attorney’s or court rooms. Zygor will fail as we will all boycot his product.
Keep up the great work with your guides – and sorry to all of you out there who just bought guides. Try being professional and emailing Dugi’s Guides directly instead of posting your complaints about a great service Dugi is offering who know’s maybe he will take care of you on his next guide he puts out.
One little note – dont trust ppl who pretend to be tolerant but give no reasons or explanations to what they say. I srsly suspect that guys who say “I have both guides and like that one more” are saying nothing until they get into deep details, and its sad that their nothing has emptional pressure vs good product of yours.