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)"
Good for you Dugi! Ive been a customer since mid 2010 and absolutely love your leveling guide! Good thing my check didn’t clear yesterday, cause I was gonna buy your dailies guide =o. Not that I’d mind paying the full price, but now I can get the acheivements guide, too!
I have bought and tried both guides in the past and have eventually stayed with you guys, This offer is great for anyone who has not got them yet and I would say that the quality and dedication DG’s put into keeping their addon up to date and keeping its customers informed is the best available.
Keep up the great work.
I just want to say that I have both guides. I like Zygors guide a lot better I have my reasons, but what he did really really pissed me off. The silly part is he didn’t need to do it. He is just money grabbing thats it. He is a ******* for doing it. In the end he will get his he has to answer to someone when he dies.
he could have taken that money and put into making the gold and achievements guide that he’s had links to on his website but nothings gotten done. he could have had it out before the x-pack like you dugi instead he was doing this.
The funny part is you had all these other guides out before him isn’t he copying you isn’t that against the law as well. lol
Good for you. Dugi’s guide has helped me immensely. I feel that your guide is worth 5 times the price. I don’t mind at all that you are having a sale and someone might pay less than me. (Some of the earlier posts were whining about that.) Anyway, rock on and keep up the good work.
Hi, i’m really interested on buying your FULL guide, including acchivments and all other stuff, could you provide me the TOTAL pricing with the disccount? Contact me on ******[at]gmail[dot]com
Also would like to know, if will be any special offer for those buying the FULL stuff instead of only the leveling guides.
Hi Jordan, you can find all our available packages and prices here – 50%
https://www.ultimatewowguide.com/amember/signup.php
Way to stick it to the man! Corporate mentality stinks and companies need to know that it’s not ok to just bully people around! I think they need to attend thier own freekin sensitivity training sessions their HR departments give to the low ranks. Keep up the good fight and remember us little guys! PS can’t wait for the Lore Master Guide to come out!
I love your leveling guide. I got it as a noob, to level my priest (and first toon) to 85 right, after I made lvl 80. What a help. Now I am a noob, second class and, what luck!, I had planned on picking up Achievements & Professions and Dailies & Events this month.
It may interest you to know that my 83 year old ****** got the leveling guide a month after I bought her into WoW. She is having a great time and leveling really fast. I can’t believe how fast she learned to make a lot of gold too!
Nice dispel on the fear. Hate it when those OP and over geared kids keep challenging me to a duel when I’m busy. Kudos for finding strength in adversity.
Great story bro!
I love your guides and am very glad I purchased them!
I also bought them not long ago, but do not see this as ‘bad luck’ but a nice way for me to purchase even more guides from you for less money! 😀
You go!
Hi Dave
As I said it the past used Zgor guides but haG a issue with them and still not resolved.
copy of email
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:44:45 +0100
Waiting for reply off email sent below sent (14/04/2010Hi John
This is the third email I,ve sent regarding access to In-line leveling guides ect
You are correct I asked for re-fund BUT THIS WAS FOR EVENTS GUIDE AND ONLY GOT REFUND FOR THIS
So why have you stopped access to LEVELING GUIDES ect
Look forward to reply very soon
yours Colin
> From: zygor
> To: ctipper
> Subject: RE: Hi i cannot log onto guides asked for recover pa…
> Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 16:15:12 -0400
>
> Hello,
>
> You purchased our guides and immediately asked for a refund, which was
> processed on 3/29/2010. Your account was removed when your refund was
> processed. Take care.
>
> John
Comments to PayPal from Zygor
Regarding comments made to Ticket 8EC2FCZ3, 1140504, by vendor Zygor Guides (VENDOR: CREATED: 2010-03-29 10:37:21 AM
> 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
The situation is that Zygors was advertising a up to $3000 prize draw so I PURCHASED Dallies Events Guide offer.(NOT WHAT ZYGOR IMPLIED FOR FREE)
But when I founded the prizes where his In-guides ect witch all ready purchased way back in 2007 and upgrade in 2008 (ORDER TZEXQHQ) I ASKED FOR REFUND.
Zygor,s Guide offers a no quibble money back grantee witch he,s not honoring by comments he has make.
Now I cant access purchased guide,s sent emails and he replied to one saying my accounts been closed because of refund on Dallies Event guides and will not reply to other sent.
This Vendor comments are not very professional and highly surprised PayPal are dealing with this vendor, use PayPal quite often but reconsidering this.
Looking forward to your reply
THIS SAYS IT ALL ABOUT ZYGOR
I was a Zygor customer for a while, then Catacalysm came out and it became clear to me, in reading all the customer feedback, that Zygor was using its installed customer base as beta-testers…put it out there, the players will find the bugs and report them. Which is what I saw happening many times, right after Cat launched. I had worked in software development and know this is a dead-end deal, so I resigned my account. Happy to find Dugi, will sign up as soon as I can afford it.
Mr. D,
You are such a cool dude and so classy.
It makes me proud to support you and
all the families that get their daily bread
working in your company.
Blessings to all of you guys.
My guess is that they feared you, and in term tryed to pressure you to close down, and although i don’t own any of your guild i do often love the freebies you put out there.
It was this time last year that I supported Dugi guides by purchasing all of the guides available, it was Zygor’s actions which made me look at Dugi’s guide in the first place and I am glad that I did.
You guys have a great attitude and I support you.
I am checking out the reviews and I found you topped all.
Actually I have been leaning towards acquiring yours- who knows- this might be the final push!
Its unfortunate that some make “fun things” into “ugly things” -even while gaming! Maybe the opposition is taking the game a bit too seriously- entering the realm of reality!
I am a newbie.
Keep up the good work!
LT
You guys have a great attitude and I support you.
I am checking out the reviews and I found you topped all.
Actually I have been leaning towards acquiring yours- who knows- this might be the final push!
Its unfortunate that some make “fun things” into “ugly things” -even while gaming! Maybe the opposition is taking the game a bit too seriously- entering the realm of reality!
I am a newbie.
Keep up the good work1
LT
i own both dugi’s guide and zygor’s. my personal preference is dugi’s, the easy answer is it is easier to use and apart from one click of the mouse i dont have to do anything to make sure i am upto date with all the guides.
i have leveled all my toons using dugi’s guides and if i lost it i think i would quit the game 🙂
keep up the good work dugi, long may you reign as #1 imho
I’m sorry you had to put up with that, that totally blows.. Glad you got through it though! 🙂
As for the sale, I won’t be able to take part of it because I’m broke now, but I’ll be buying the achievements and professions guide in the coming months I hope!
I’m so happy with your products!!! (you know I own all your guides)
I’ve talked to my brother about the guide (he sees me using it and follows me around Azeroth :D) and this will be the perfect birthday gift for him this year. His birthday comes in a couple of weeks and this offer is so sweet!
Definetely, I’m totally buying it for him!!!
As always, thank you Dugi and thanks to everyone in your team!!!!!!
Good for you, I have your guides and use them as I need them, as for the special offer lets hope those who wanted the guides and could not afford them now get that chance, and thanks for some insight as to what is/and has been going on behind the scenes, We also sell your guides and would not associate our well respected website with an unethical program, I wish you well for the future, kind regards Mike.
G’day Dugi.
Good for you and more power to your arm. Out there in this beautiful world are a lot of people who just want to stuff it up for everybody else so that THEY can float up to the top over every thing and every body else. There is no thought of rights for any body else or moral wrongs in the methods THEY use. Keep it going Dugi you give a lot of pleasure to a lot of people and that must give you a lot of satisfaction. Good on you..
Typical, a week after I buy some of your guides – my luck sucks 🙁
I did the same thing, added several of the guides this past 2 weeks, so do not feel bad. My luck is right there with you, you are not alone.