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The Tale of irninja:
Walking on Water Liquid
This is a story about Michael Foster, also known as irninja in the Team Liquid community and Freelancer in his own community. To begin, we need to travel back to the year 2010 before anyone knew who or what an irninja was.
We start out with a Minecraft server hosted by yours truly for the Team Liquid community back in late 2010. The server opened officially on October 4th and Michael joined the same day. On October 5th, less than 24 hours later, he was banned for griefing (intentionally destroying the work of others). Unfortunately, due to the current state of Minecraft the moderation tools we had were sketchy at best and so we decided to unban him.
Four days later, on October 9th, he was caught griefing again. We had put him on a watch list and decided to keep an eye on him, mostly by going invisible in-game and physically watching him. It paid off. We caught him stealing from other players and destroying structures. This event was witnessed by myself and multiple other reputable players I had on my moderation team, including Puosu and Torenhire. We came to a unanimous decision in our staff channel to ban him. Not one of the 10+ moderators in the channel had a single good thing to say about him, as even when he wasn't griefing other players he was griefing the server itself with giant squares serving no purpose other than to be an eyesore for everyone else around them.
Now, our ban system worked something like this - you get caught, the moderator who caught you is responsible for explaining the situation and banning you, and afterwards you could appeal directly to me if you felt the ban was unjust. Naturally he sent me a message to appeal his ban, claiming he was nowhere near the incident in question and that two other players on the server could vouche for him.
I got in contact with both of the players he said would vouche for him, as they were still on the server playing at the time. That's when a funny thing happened... neither of them would vouche for Michael, and in fact one of them even went as far as saying he had never seen him before!
For whatever reason (perhaps because he had a good posting history on TL) I decided to give him a stern warning and a second chance to accompany it. By the end of the same day he was banned again, this time for good.
Around this time Michael purchased a website (teamlegacy.net) and started work on it, playing host to gaming communities for Starcraft II, Battlefield 3, and the upcoming Guild Wars 2.
Now, gaming communities do not just pop up overnight. Take Team Liquid, for example. What started as a small clan website a decade ago is now the premiere website for anything Starcraft, as well as hosting very sizeable communities for DOTA 2 and many other games. Unless you are an already-established community looking to create a new branch (as TL did with DOTA 2) the process of creating a gaming community is a long one.
However, there is another way to jump start your new gaming community - deception. The art of pretending you're something you're not in order to achieve a goal that you otherwise would not be able to. In this case it was pretending to be affiliated with Team Liquid.
May 6th, 2011. Michael approaches me in private and asks if I'd be willing to use my influence in the Team Liquid community to gather some high-profile members for his teamlegacy.net community. I politely declined. He then turned to asking me to promote his community directly on Team Liquid, which I also declined.
May 18th, 2011. Michael approaches me yet again with a proposition. This time he was interested in capitalizing on the Terraria community and asked me for assistance. He informed me that he had been granted permission by Team Liquid staff to host the official Team Liquid Terraria server over on his official sister site, teamlegacy.net and wanted me to join as the server administrator. Once again I declined.
These were just minor setbacks for Michael in the grand scheme of things, for he had already started work on his biggest project yet - Guild Wars 2.
Michael created the Guild Wars 2 thread on Team Liquid, which was supposed to be the go-to thread for all discussion of the game as well as the Team Liquid guild. What started off as a Team Liquid guild quickly turned into a Team Legacy guild, and all links in the thread suddenly switched over to teamlegacy.net, including the Teamspeak server.
What's more, the banner for teamlegacy.net used the Team Liquid horse logo as well as text below, branding it as an "official Team Liquid sister community". Michael also advertised himself and his guild as Team Liquid's official presence in the Guild Wars 2 community. People searching for guilds both in-game and on the forums would see Team Liquid and end up on teamlegacy.net instead.
He consistently claimed to be officially endorsed by Team Liquid all throughout the early days of Guild Wars 2, and once he was well established he started dropping the name completely. In addition to the Guild Wars 2 community, he also pretended to be affiliated with Team Liquid in order to get writing jobs in various other communities, including some owned by Curse Gaming such as arenajunkies.com and gw2guru.com.
Today, the Team Liquid community thread for Guild Wars 2 doesn't even sport the name Team Liquid. It has now become the "Team Legacy Discussion Thread".
I will admit, this really rubs me the wrong way. I managed one of the largest sub-communities on Team Liquid to date and I never once abused that for personal gain. In fact, it was much the opposite as I spent thousands of dollars on the Team Liquid community over the years. And yet here is someone that takes the priveledge of creating and nurturing a sub-community and completely exploits it for monetary gain.
But alas, this is not about me. It's about Michael, so let's move on to his next venture! On September 26th, 2011, Michael once again approached me about joining his community. This time it was in regards to Battlefield 3, in which he also created the community thread on Team Liquid for. He has a habit of creating such threads far in advance of when they are actually needed, just so he can secure the thread as his own.
He wanted me to manage his Battlefield 3 server for him. As usual, I declined. He went ahead and set it up under the name of Team Liquid and slowly but surely started changing things over to Team Legacy. In fact, when you searched for "Team Liquid" in the server browser you would find his server - but upon joining you were spammed with ads for teamlegacy.net and no mention of Team Liquid anywhere.
Around this same time he set up his own Minecraft server, since I had closed mine down. Once again he branded it as a Team Liquid server, but conveniently plastered teamlegacy.net everywhere he could. And when I say everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE.
"We come from www.teamliquid.net, our sister site for professional Starcraft 2, and we aim to carry their vision of providing top-end competitive content into GW2."
This is his guild recruitment post on gw2fans.com. source
"Team Legacy as a whole was originally established in early August 2010 as a Team Liquid offshoot. TeamLiquid.net is the premier website for Starcraft and Starcraft 2 outside of Korea and a popular website for competitive hardcore gamers."
This is teamlegacy.net's official history information. source
Pretty much anywhere you go on the internet, if you come across Team Legacy and didn't know better you would think it was affiliated with Team Liquid in some way. After all, through the years Michael has gotten approval from multiple nameless Team Liquid staff members to affiliate himself.
So... what can we make of all this? Over the years he has claimed to be Team Liquid staff, claimed to be affiliated with Team Liquid, has used the Team Liquid banner on his own website, has claimed to be Team Liquid on various community forums across various games, and has otherwise deceived thousands of gamers into joining his community - all so he could pocket tens of thousands of dollars in ad revenue from his Amazon Affiliate account (not a penny of which actually goes into his own community, even, as they run off donations).
I am writing this post in order to expose this person for what he really is, and make a case that we do not need him in our community; nor should he be supported in others. It is a shame that he has already ingrained himself in the Curse community, but that's for them and this is for us. We have the ability to prevent further harm to our own community and as such I believe we should use it to our fullest extent.
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I'd like to corroborate and add to some of the points brought up by Serejai. There are many details and specifics in this discussion, but at the end of it all it's important to keep in mind the central concepts and the central offences. Michael Foster (aka Freelancer, irninja) is a person who, for several years now, has campaigned to create a false association with TL to benefit his personal business and gaming community.
This campaign has generally been carried out subtly - and never overtly on TL itself. Thus, there is no clear smoking gun to be found, but there is a preponderance of evidence that must be collected and considered as a whole before a clearer picture forms. I will outline some of this evidence here.
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+ Show Spoiler [A Comment on the Name] +It's unlikely an accident that the name "Team Legacy" itself serves to further the campaign of deception. Already belonging to an earlier-established FPS team ( http://teamlegacyhq.com/ ), the name simply doesn't make sense unless it was designed to be confused with Team Liquid. "Team Legacy" is a curious name when it doesn't belong to a team or a small group of players, and Foster himself has said that the entity was designed and envisioned to be a large multi-gaming community. Sharing half the name and the same acronym would be quite suspect if it were, for example, two corporations selling similar services. It's difficult to "prove" intentions, though, so these points could all be explained away were it not for the intentionally confusing way the name was used. The ambiguity present in the name and acronym are consistently used to imply connections to and conflate the two entities ( http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=148872 ). The title of the thread was originally "Guild Wars 2: TL Guild/Discussion". Someone on TL would think 'TL' means Team Liquid. But what it really means is Team Legacy. Maybe Team Legacy is the Team Liquid GW2 guild, then? The amount of confusion just from the title is apparent.
+ Show Spoiler [False Implications] +There are numerous instances of implied Team Legacy/Team Liquid affiliation on the internet. Though some have been removed, they're still scattered everywhere, searchable by anyone interested. Here are a handful of the most blatant ones. + Show Spoiler [Main Team Legacy Website] +http://teamlegacy.net/page/history ( img: http://i.imgur.com/UIVcmrB.png )
At the time [note: 2008], both Freelancer and Lonniehaskel [sic] both played Starcraft as a guilty pleasure, and were heavily involved [sic] the popular esports community, Team Liquid. They decided that with the support of their own guilds and their Team Liquid friends, they had a solid base to found a guild for an upcoming game that Team Liquid did not yet support. After obtaining a few contacts, and proper approval, they set off to further establish their idea.
So irninja (Freelancer) and this other guy decided in 2008 to start a gaming community with their TL friends. With these two and their TL buddies, they "obtained contacts" in order to get the "proper approval". Who are these contacts? And what proper approval was obtained? There is a strong implication that TL staff somehow gave them permission to make a TL-affiliated gaming community. This is flatly false. The "heavy" involvement these two had in the Team Liquid community in 2008-2010 is also extremely unlikely. Foster joined TL in 2010, roughly a month before SC2 came out. The other guy a year later in July 2011. In the TL community forum, this thread was posted asking for someone to create Team Legacy's logo. "Calling GFX Artists: The GW2 Guild needs help" http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=231749
"Team Legacy" Logo. aka. the Team Liquid Guild Wars 2 community guild.
Save the time and dont ask "why not use the horse logo?". Numerous reasons aside from the basic fact its basically a trademark that is already being used. We want originality. Theres no denying we consist of 100% teamliquid posters, but that doesnt mean we need to be a clone either.
Strange, given that Team Legacy has no issues using TL's banner on their site and other places ( http://i.imgur.com/HIafq9w.png ).
Please do not discuss the guild itself, the nomenclature, or anything already discussed a hundred times over in the Sports and Games section, keep this to either submitting an image, or commenting on another's. Thanks for your respect.
Yes, that would be an awkward conversation indeed. -Guild Wars 2: TL Guild/Discussion http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=148872Guild Wars 2 was the main game that Team Legacy was trying to promote. All the big MMO websites were labeling it "WoWkiller, no like for real this time I promise" so it was hugely popular and very successful in drawing in big audiences. Most of their recruitment on TL came from this thread. There was some backlash about previous iterations of the OP regarding Team Liquid vs. Team Legacy, names, affiliations, and so on - so the OP exists currently in a heavily-edited state. -TL Battlefield 4 Let's Play~!! http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429539Here's the newest one that he's hoping to get more recruits from. Notice he carefully doesn't mention Team Legacy (there is some indication he's gotten in a bit of trouble for that in the past). People that play with him will be not-so-subtly influenced to register on the Team Legacy forums and join the organization itself. -Wildstar MMO http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=405589Yes, we used to be attached at the hip, but now we've become independent. -TL Minecraft PvP/Factions Server - October 11th http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=269392As mentioned by Serejai.
+ Show Spoiler [Motivation] +Just as with intent, it is difficult to "prove" motivation. However, it's an important point to tackle when demonstrating offences like those outlined here. People don't go through a lot of trouble and hassle unless they are motivated. I think one of the plausible key motivators for Michael Foster is money. His interests in business and economics are certainly put to good use in managing his website and gaming community. Ever since the site has been up, there have been referral links to Amazon, and they've grown more sophisticated since then. Amazon has a referral program where users sign up for an Amazon Associate account and gain money for sales generated from their website. A special link is generated for the Associate to put on their site. It links to Amazon but with the ID of the Associate. If a sale is made, the Associate is owed a dollar amount equal to a percentage of the final sale. The connection with the Associate program, Foster, and Team Legacy is simple: more viewers = more clicks = more money. + Show Spoiler [Referral Revenue Analysis] +Just so there are no lingering questions, I thought I'd take the time to explain how the Amazon Associate program works by setting up a simple model. Many websites use a similar model to project their own income. Keep in mind that models are not a direct 1:1 correspondence with the reality of the situation. In Zynga's heyday, they modeled their products as making ~1 USD per person that used their products. This certainly doesn't mean that every single person that played some Facebook game bought into it at a dollar a piece, but it was a remarkably effective model at projecting revenue nonetheless because of the statistics at play. For referral revenue, there are a few linked concepts: 1. Eyes on your website. 2. Interest in buying goods. 3. Willingness to commit to buying goods. 4. Average price of those goods. 5. Commission that the Associate gets. All these variables are related in a fairly complex way, but we can simplify their relationship by making some abstractions. + Show Spoiler [Variables] +v = unique visitors per day x = percentage of users who click amazon referral links b = percentage of users who buy something once there p = average price of bought item c = commission the associate gets from each sale This way, the projected average money made per day is v*x*b*p*c. + Show Spoiler [Some Notes] +Most of those variables are easy to look up or estimate accurately, but 'x' is difficult to accurately determine without privileged data. Unique visitors per day 'v' can be calculated from various webmetrics. It is generally seen as Amazon's job in the referral business to convert eyes into buys so 'b' is often called the conversion rate. It is generally understood to be ~5%, although it has been demonstrated to be as low as ~1% and as high as ~15% in special cases. The commission an Associate gets per month is outlined here https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/landing/referralfees.html and is based on products shipped per month. v = 1000 unique visitors per day (mid 2011, based on statements by Foster) x = percent of 'v' that click through to Amazon, unknown b = 5%, most common industry-accepted conversion rate p = roughly 150 USD based on the products available being advertised (computer hardware + peripherals) c = starts at 4% and rises based on v,x,b The only unknown here is 'x'. And for this simplified explanation and model, 'x' is frontloaded with some other considerations (e.g. 1 out of 4 buyers purchase more than one item from Amazon). Out of 100 PC gamers visiting a PC gaming community site, how many would be interested enough in computer hardware and peripherals to have their attention drawn to Amazon products on display? A very conservative guess might be 5/100 and a more reaching guess might be 15/100. And then this number would be increased slightly in our model to take into account those users who buy more than one item at Amazon or who are interested in above-average-price products. + Show Spoiler [x of 5%] +Going with the very conservative estimate of 5% for x, we get v*x*b = 1000 * 5% * 5% = 2.5 That means our model is projecting that we'll sell on average 2.5 items a day or 75 items a month. Based on Amazon's Associate rates, 75 items a month earns 6.5% commission on all sales. Thus 'c' = 6.5% and we have (v*x*b)*p*c = (2.5) * 150 * 6.5% = 24.38 USD per day on average of projected revenue That represents a referral revenue of 8,896.88 USD a year. + Show Spoiler [Breakdown] +
This is 8.90 USD a year on average per unique visitor to the site.
This is with 99.75% of website views resulting in no transactions.
While 5% might be exceedingly low and 15% might be exceedingly optimistic, 10% represents a middle ground where we've taken our conservative 5% estimate and modified it to take into account abstractions otherwise not present in this simplified model. v*x*b = 1000 * 10% * 5% = 5 items on average per day or 150 items a month. This puts 'c' at 7%. (v*x*b)*p*c = (5) * 150 * 7% = 52.5 USD per day of projected revenue That represents a referral revenue of 19,162.50 USD a year. + Show Spoiler [Breakdown] +
This is 19.16 USD a year on average per unique visitor to the site.
This is with 99.5% of views resulting in no transactions.
The estimates of $8,900 and $20,000 annual revenue are based on information from 2011. But were I to guess Team Legacy's most successful year in terms of membership, it would have to be the 6 months before and the 6 months after the release of Guild Wars 2 - their flagship MMO as a community. Without privileged information, I can only guess at a visitors per day stat, but it would be an extremely conservative guess that 'v' doubled in 2012 in comparison to 2011 because of the hype generated by the GW2 launch. This time period easily represents Team Legacy's most accelerated period of growth so the multiplier is probably more likely between 3 and 4. + Show Spoiler [Theoretical 2012 Projection] +v = 2000 (at a guess, doubled from 2011) x = users interested enough to click through referrals, estimated at 10% b = 5%, most common industry-accepted conversion rate p = roughly 150 USD based on the products available being advertised (computer hardware + peripherals) c = starts at 4% and rises based on v,x,b v*x*b = 2000 * 10% * 5% = 10 items on average per day or 300 items a month. This puts 'c' at 7%. (v*x*b)*p*c = (10) * 150 * 7% = 105 USD per day of projected revenue That represents a referral revenue of 38,325 USD a year. + Show Spoiler [Breakdown] +
This is 19.16 USD a year on average per unique visitor to the site.
This is with 99.5% of views resulting in no transactions.
So far, I've been careful to be conservative with the numbers. My intention was to demonstrate what happens when one of them changes rather than to theorize in depth about actual revenues made by Team Legacy. I'm going to re-examine some of the variables at play by some conjecturing based on impressions of Team Legacy's membership and growth during their GW2 period. v = 3300 + Show Spoiler [...] +I'm tempted to say 5x growth because of the sheer magnitude of growth Team Legacy experienced in building up the hype pre- and post-release GW2 provided x = users interested enough to click through referrals, estimated at 10% + Show Spoiler [...] +Nothing different here based on Team Legacy membership b = 6.5% + Show Spoiler [...] +The industry-accepted number for conversion rate is ~5% across all realms. It's been documented that much higher percentages are possible. Highly successful blogs based on reviewing and recommending specific goods have gotten as high as 12-15%. The conversion rate, then, can be affected by 'priming'. The more prepared a viewer of a site is to spend money on a certain product, the more likely it is they'll buy it once linked to it.
Team Legacy, as a PC gaming community, has as its sole membership PC gamers. And as a group, Team Legacy is interested in newer, fresher games rather than older, more established games. The viewers of the site then tend to be more primed on average to buy PC gaming equipment like graphics cards and peripherals and so on than a viewer of a more "neutral" site. Thus, I've bumped the conversion rate from 5% to 6.5% to represent this theorized improved priming. p = 150 USD, same as before c = determined by Amazon's payment table, as always v*x*b = 3300 * 10% * 6.5% = 21.45 items on average per day or 643.5 items a month. This puts 'c' at 8%. (v*x*b)*p*c = (21.45) * 150 * 8% = 257.40 USD per day of projected revenue That represents an annual projected revenue of 93,951 USD. + Show Spoiler [Breakdown] +
This is 28.47 USD a year on average per unique visitor to the site.
This is with 99.35% of views resulting in no transactions.
We can easily see that more users = more money, and thus monetary motivation is certainly a plausible explanation for Foster's deception. Beyond the realm of hard numbers, there are also revenue streams which are difficult to quantify. Using his website's newfound popularity and styling himself as an important PC gaming persona, Foster has gotten various positions and jobs writing articles (some of which were actually written by Team Legacy members for the benefit of other Team Legacy members). Foster also accepts donations http://teamlegacy.net/donate/ styled as paying for Team Legacy expenses.
As a final note, it's worth emphasizing that Team Legacy as an organization and as a member group has no responsibility in all this. Several years ago, no one could credibly argue that Team Legacy and Foster were separate entities in any real sense. Today, though, that isn't true. Team Legacy is a large member organization, run by a bedrock of volunteers capable of creating and managing content without need for any particular authority. If Team Legacy suffers as a result of this thread, it is only as a consequence of its unfortunate proximity to Foster.
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We received this information in advance of this post and upon reviewing it have decided to ban irninja.
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United States7481 Posts
I thought this guy was a little skeevy the first time Serejai brought him up about the minecraft stuff a long time ago, but wasn't aware of all the stuff that happened since until Def put together his post. Thanks to both of them!
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28078 Posts
Yeah, I'm glad someone like this has been revealed and taken care of.
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Lalalaland34483 Posts
I first ran across him when I was interested in GW2 and immediately felt it was all a little fishy. Interesting.
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He really sounds like an unpleasant person.
EDIT: I used to be in Team Legacy for a short while. Has anything changed between Freelancer and Team Legacy from this, or is his only repercussions on TL?
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On November 13 2013 06:42 Chairman Ray wrote:
He really sounds like an unpleasant person.
EDIT: I used to be in Team Legacy for a short while. Has anything changed between Freelancer and Team Legacy from this, or is his only repercussions on TL?
He is the owner of Team Legacy so unfortunately the damage has already been done on that front.
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Glad that this is posted out in the public, this guy was unpleasant and a total hindrance to anything he was involved in that I was around for. Serejai didn't even scratch the surface of this guy's minecraft shenanigans.
Not surprised he abused everything he possibly could for his own gains. Thanks for putting this all together, guys.
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I have been lurking here for quite some time and simply had to register to post my 2 cents.
I have had the "pleasent" experience of dealing with Freelancer in an couple of ways; For years I was a long time writer on Curse's ArenaJunkies and later in charge of Curse's GuildWars2Guru PvP scene.
First of all, Freelancer is well known by pretty much every single moderator on GW2Guru. As a long time member he have been causing nothing but trouble since day one. Freelancer had a vision for his community to "conquer" gw2 and me being a super moderator I had to deal with freelancer and his crew on a daily basis. I would get hundreds of reports every month claiming the craziest things that I would simply not put much into but that I later found out to be true. At the time I couldn't simply ban him as they were not a concern for me guru/ me as a moderator, mostly being in-game exploits, ddos or impersonation etc.
Freelancer has several times been confronted with screenshots of internal google doc's. A document that featured every single member and a list of articles, posts and "daily duties". Where every single member had to "sign off" when they had gone to certain articles/links and promoted/engaged in conversation on them. There were guidelines as to what they should post, in what manner they should write it. Members were even adviced to find a name not easily recognizable as a Team Legacy member. This way he could generate massive amount of interest to his sub-par articles on ALL the platforms that he had managed to infiltrate. (I am doing my best to find the screenshot, it was HEAVILY shared in the GW2 community)
I know for a fact that this was done heavily on ArenaJunkies as at the time I still had access to AJ moderation and was able to cross-check IP adresses of these "new" accounts "loving his work" with their genuine accounts on Guru.
I had a lot more I wanted to say and a lot more drama regarding freelancer but these involve more people and I have no intend on stepping on anyone elses toes.
All in all, this guy is very dodgy and anyone who intends to get invovled with Team Legacy should think twice before doing it.
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Nicely freaking done. I'm kinda surprised it took this long to find him, but good riddance. On the bright side it confirms just how big team liquid is.
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the Dagon Knight4002 Posts
I'm very seldom happy to see someone banned; there's almost always an uncomfortable feeling that someone is being misunderstood, or could maybe do better if given a second chance.
I doubt that's the case here. Glad to see him gone.
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Is it possible to follow this up with legal actions?
Is Team Liquid a registered trade mark(tried looking it up, only found a thread about barcraft)?
Due to the fact that he made money with impersonating TL staff and deceived others by acting as if there'd be a connection between him and TL, I'm pretty sure that it would have been illegal in germany, don't know much about the american justice system though.
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intrigue
Washington, D.C9933 Posts
thanks for the post. how disgusting
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FREEAGLELAND26780 Posts
What a piece of shit. Thanks for the story Serejai.
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Russian Federation3631 Posts
one day I hope to be as good a poster as def -
nice to see dirty liars getting owned
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as i played GW2, the teamlegacy "community guild" always seemed strange to me, it had tryouts and interviews and everything.
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I was wondering when this came out. Sweet, sweet Serejai! I remember this way back when and thought it was just going to be slid under the rug.
thanks a lot for the justice!
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Justice has been served.
The guy is a real scumbag just from reading all that.
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On November 14 2013 21:28 LaNague wrote:
as i played GW2, the teamlegacy "community guild" always seemed strange to me, it had tryouts and interviews and everything.
I can tell you that for the competitive scene back in GW1 this was pretty standard procedure for the first couple years.
Overall it just makes me happy to see thorough detective work put to good use. This guy always seemed like a damn parasite trying to subtly false propaganda with his dumb little schemes. What I didn't know is that it actually made him money, which is just saddening.
Good riddance.
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EPT
