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)"
Dugi,
1. Have all your products. They are all everyone has said; They are great.
2. What hasn’t been said is that your customer service is awesome. Whenever I had a question or and issue (about a deal) you answered within 24 hrs and more importantly, had a solution.
3. Zygor blinked.
4. Please stop besmirching gnomes by comparing Zygor to a gnome. A Ferengi, maybe; but not a noble gnome.
Keep up the great work!
JD
1 year on glad to see all the good work and support for you and your group Dugi.
Every update is a winner,ethical,transparent and polite always gets my vote.
Here’s to another good year ;p
This guide is so awesome I wish I could buy more to support your efforts, but I already bought it all. Thumbs up for continuing to offer good deals, Dugi.
Hi Dave. I firstly just wanted to thank you for such an awesome in game guide that offers so much for me as a casaul to ******** gamer
In the past I paid for quite a few levelling guides and even got the chance to use Zygor guides for a little while. At the time those guides were a help but until the day I found your guides I’ve now never looked back. They are such a HUGE help that take away all the brain work for questing and so on, I honestly don’t know what I’d do without these guides.
You know I go through these little bored phases with wow at times that cause me to stop playing for months on end but I always end up coming back and I always find that in the end your guides is one of the things that makes it even more fun for me
At first I started off small and bought only a few guides but in the end I got the whole lot because I enjoyed using them so much. Your guides are a life saver bro!! Keep up the great work
It has all been said already, so I will just say YEAH!
BTW, your customer service is great. Had a odd question which was responded to within a couple of days with an answer that fixed the problem the first time. Thanks
We all as customers expect a lot from our hard earned money. Don’t promise what you can’t deliver. Dugi has delivered and I just wanted to say thanks!
The lesson to be learned is that when your playing hardball it doesn’t do to stint on your business insurance.
Their lawyers would have had Zygor for breakfast……….
BTW
This happens all the time…there’s even companies that specialize in shaking down business for what they can get.
Welcome to the club 🙂
yh i was with zygor for 2 years then i purchased a dailie guide which wasnt the best so i asked for a refund and guess what! the next day they wiped all my information off there databases, didnt reply to my emails and reports and i had spnt over 200 dollars with that company, the only way i got my money back was reporting issue to all my banks, so dugi im defo gonna buy your guide on the day!
We love you Dave. Don’t worry about stupid Zygor.
I just wanted to say I used to use both guides as a comparison as wow player and a marketer. I liked both guides, I liked yours more and always promoted yours over his ever time. I do play wow pretty much every day.
To be honest I got really turned off with zygor’s lack of customer service. I asked him in advanced info on his guides and what he’s going to do about the free lifetime upgrades for your clients now.. His answer plain as day was it’s a new expansion so it’s a new guide.. I’m like MMkay but how are you making your clients happy.. I got chirps. After several attempts to speak to him a client I finally told him I’m an affiliate I needed answers, Then I got his attention. I told em forget it you took to long your wasting my time as a client your canned responses are **** you need to take care of your clients first and formost just because you got your money doesn’t mean you can treat like they don’t exsist.
Btw I posed on the forum it was deleted.. Nice huh. That was around cata release..
@colin you can file a grievance with clickbank.com. You can explain the situation on what’s going on keep all those receipt numbers you got in your emails. Send them all of them explain there situation. They are the ones that process a lot of payments for his guides.
You show them for what guides you have access to and which one you refunded. And now he’s denying you access to products rendered paid for. I’m sure that will get his attention because he gets enough of these they can pull his guide off. I’ve seen it done before lol
I told him that charging these crazy prices and doing negative campaigns is a bad for business long term.
He didn’t listen, Funny thing is I’m part of a group of super affiliates, We pulled all our campaigns when he treated me like ****. I’m sure he saw a dip
It’s just sad the way he treats his clients.. BTW I have all your guides they are awesome.
Have been using Dugi guides for over 3 months now and definitely recommend them.
His updates are regular, and explanations of how to install and use clear and simple.
They are reasonably priced, so take advantage of Dugi’s bargain sale if you haven’t got them yet.
Could you make a package like this: Alliance & Horde Leveling / Dailies & Event Guide ($80.00) + Alliance & Horde Achievements & Professions Guide ($30.00) = less than 100 bucks? Cause when i pretend to purchase it with 50% off i was looking for maybe not more than 50 bucks to spend on. Since i’m a casual player. I mean, you could make a package with the FULL package name with like 90$? Would be a great deal for me who lives in Brazil. Currency is a ***** here, you know? 110$ = to more or less 250R$.
I’m sorry but the 50% off everything is the best that we can offer, it would be a total of $55 to purchase everything that we offer during the sale.
I purchased your guides last fall, and think they are fantastic, they have really increased my enjoyment of the game. I bought the leveling guides for both factions, and I think I will get the rest of the guides with this sale!
I am glad you stood your ground, too many people try to take the easy way out by using lawyers to try to intimidate people out of their hard earned money for no valid reason! Great product, Great Service – well worth the price of admission!
Dugi, you’re right, this isn’t the post to compare their product with yours. I was just making another example about commercialism not going hand in hand with ethics all the time. And i bought the leveling guides, dailies and events and dungeon guides, for both factions.
Woops accidentally submitted it to early (and now that i’m distracted from checking out addon’s and What not). Yeah i was also meant to mention that with Zygor making this much fuss Over Dugi Guides , he must be really Hurting, and losing Customers. if any thing u think he would drop the Price for his Leveling Guide in order to encourage people to take his Guide instead. However instead he’s having other people (Lawyer/s) do some of his ***** work, Perhaps the rest of the ***** Work is done by those that havn’t Discovered Dugi’s Guides yet and have unfortunately Supported Zygor’s
Dave
Being ethical is often not what commercialism is all about. I paid more then $ 100 for your guides (127 to be precise) and you and Zygor both ask money for the levels 80-85. Publically putting your product next to another product to show how much better you are, is in our country not something people appreciate in advertising. You don’t mention the other by name. Making a “day that Zygor came” would be a nice joke, if it was meant as a joke. You don’t need it, really, you’re doing great and can ignore Zygor. And for anyone who thinks i choose party for Zygor: i don’t, they are just as bad in this, because they went public to their members by mail before i even heard of Dugi lol
But you would have received a lot more than a couple of Leveling guides for $127, again I never mention anything bad about their products and this is not post to compare their product with our product.
“Being ethical is often not what commercialism is all about.” This is an unfortunate truth. The story however, is not about marketing competition or a product comparison. It is about ruthless, predatory and yes, unethical business practices. Frankly I wish that every company that was the victim of such reprehensible behavior, would make a similar public exposure of the perpetrator. There is nothing immoral or unethical about celebrating a victory or speaking the truth.
I have never heard of Zygor. Having learned of their treachery, I am glad I was steered towards Dugi’s Guides first. I really like the product and have and will recommend it to my friends…I will also tell this story, and suggest that Zygor does not deserve their business, regardless of the quality of their product.
well many has said this before. Dogi your guides ROCKS. to start it is simple and you can start where you left off after a couple of Instances or Battle grounds. and continue quet leveling or daylies as you pleas. for what Zygor guide are it is ****. sorry but i have tried it and it sucks. it fast jumps quests if you lvl are to high and oki it can out deliver and grab quest but what is the point if the guide skips 10 -12 quests that can be nice to have for some gear. it is annoing and totaly .WTF happened i just come from that place. “travels back” ???? why in the world why shall i go back again without doing anything??” because of the **** jumpingh quest thing you end up traveling back and forth and wasting time and gold for traveling. so i say Dugi lick bacvk make it better and stay on the topp:D
You have my support 100% a happie dugi guid owner
Reply to Robb Comments
In my opinion sounds like you are a member of Zygor Team please read my experience with said company (Colin Says)
I thing Dugi was right going public and letting us know what’s happing, and why he had to withdraw his guides as any sensible professional business person would do.
I am not one the Zygor team, I am simply a Zygor guide user – just because I am backing Zygor up shouldn’t mean I am on his team…otherwise everyone posting should be considered on Dugi’s team…listen if Dugi had done nothing wrong and was not violating any laws, he would have no reason to pull his guides…
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
ZYGOR COMMENTS 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
Well keep backing Zygor’s guide if that is what you like but we will continue to use Dugi’s. If we wanted to use another guide we would do so research and try another. We are here because we Support Dugi and his Guides. Good luck and have fun playing WoW the way you want. I know we do. Game On!
That was to Robb not Colin. 8)
We have already proven that we are not violating any laws and it remains unchallenged today. You’re welcome to prove it wrong to everyone.
Tremendo problema el causado por tourguide, en fin espero que se solucione en bien de todos lo clientes.
Well after having a Friend send me his Copy of the Leveling Guide I Decided to Support The Addon by Getting my Own Copy because i liked it soo much and now have all the Alliance Guides and Hope for New Updates everyday or the addition of something new.
From what i can see from Zygor’s Website for me the only thing it has going for it atm imo is the GUI it has.
Well Dugi what else can I say other than WOOT! Good for you. I did use zygor’s guide in the past, but I can honestly say that your guide and your company blow them completely out of Azeroth! I had problems with their guide and got absolutely no support, which is why I went looking for a different guide. I came across yours and have never looked back. I recently had some trouble with your new launcher and everyone I worked with (including you to my great honor) went out of their way to fix the problem. I currently own all your guides and am not the least bit upset about your upcoming deal because your stuff is well worth more. To anyone considering getting these guides! DO IT! You will be glad you did. Thanks again Dugi to you and your whole team. Keep up the fantastic work!
Wow, no offence Dugi but you are just sinking to their level…looks like Zygor tried to deal with an issue legally behind closed doors and you went public with it?? That’s pretty lame. I know, I am sure a lot of people will disagree with me here but the fact is you were not the better man here. I’m not saying what Zygor did was right, but you are doing yourself no justice by creating a “Zygor” day and a long bashing post.
On that note, Zygors guides only cost $10 more than yours and for the longest time (until a few months ago) it was your company that charged more for the guides…either way they aren’t $100.
Also, don’t bash Zygor for not putting money towards bettering their guides…it’s disappointing to see you offer free addons such as talented as bonuses when really those are available to anyone. That’s false advertising IMO. I’ve seen both guides behind the scenes and Zyor’s guide is far more polished with some key features that aren’t even present in the Dugi’s guide. No offence but if you really feel Zygor would of made better use of his money “bettering his guides”…maybe it’s you that could make better use of their time bettering YOUR guides rather than writing these long bashing posts…just a thought..
This time last year Zygor guides cost $100 for both leveling guides and then those same customers had to pay an additional $30 for Cataclysm update after a free lifetime updates promise.
The main reason Zygor lowered his prices is to be competitive with Dugi Guides.
Dugi Guides offered free Cataclsym updates to customers who have purchased within 6 months which also included free Daily Guides update. Total cost $30
Zygor Guides offered free Cataclysm updates to customers who purchased within 2 months
Zygor Guides charges an additional $23 for Daily Guides updates and only offer 2 months of free updates. Total cost $53
We think charging extra for Cataclysm Daily Guides update are unethical as the majority of the content already exist with the Cataclysm leveling guide update.
We offer Talented templates guides that we created as a free bonus and not the addon itself, that is against the policy.
I never said their products are bad, I said their ethics are bad so please stay on topic.
nice try Zygor…and even without Dugi’s comments (based on facts), Colin’s experience with you says it all regarding how you deal with customers.
Glad I never wasted my money on any of your “services”
I’m not Zygor..and Dugi you implied by saying Zygor should be re-investing their money into their guides rather than chasing legal matters…I simply was stating the fact their guides are far superior and polished that re-investing money would be a waste of time.
It’s unfortunate Colin experienced that kind of support although I am confused as it’s Clickbank who processes refunds and not Zygor…
anyways – what you’re doing here is just as wrong as what Zygor did and before, I just didn’t like the way Dugi’s Guide came to creation and now I dislike the way you conduct business…and believe me, that’s not good for your business
Enjoy Zygor Day 🙂
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
You are simply stating your opinion…. it doesn’t make it a fact.
I used Dugi’s Guide for some time and I liked it. Then I had found Zygor’s and purhased it because of the SIS. Yes Zygor’s Guide is more polished as you called it Robb. But I have had lots of problems with the SIS because it skips a lot of quests (which I understand it supposed to help speed up the process to allow you to go quests which will help out more. I even used it for a short bit during Cata. BUT it skipped a lot of quests in Cata and even in previous expansion where I had to grind to lvl. My wife was just a few bubbles in to her new level and it told her to grind over 3/4s of the way to the next level. I am not saying Zygor’s guide is bad. I do like the way it looked and looks now, BUT you are talking about the look of Dugi’s Guide when it is BY FAR a more better product with the content that the Guides give you. I have used Dugi’s Guide more and love it. Of couse Dugi had to do almost everything from scratch because of HOW Zygor went about all it as well. Let’s see Zygor start from scratch and see how pretty it looks and sorry the Guides are not as good as Dugi’s in ANY way. Keep up the great work Dugi and look forward to more improvements and guides. Your guides have my complete support. Take care and GAME ON!