TourGuide has been back online for 4 days which was about the same time we released our new addon, and yet after all the controversy we didn’t hear any official announcement from Zygor or Tekkub, it is as if the issue is being “swept under the rug” so we can all forget it ever happened.

After 3 weeks of on going lawyer discussions I now feel comfortable to disclose the information below.

UltimateWoWGuide.com wish to take a stand that we were within our rights to distribute TourGuide until 18th Feb 2010, any other public statements stating otherwise is false and defamatory against our business for the following reasons.

1. On 7th January 2009 Tekkub gave me permission in writing to specifically sell TourGuide with my guides commercially (I chose those words for a purpose) with the only condition to not sell TourGuide ‘alone’. refer to this screenshot of Tekkub’s permission in writing,

This proves that we are within our rights to distribute TourGuide for commercial use and this also proves that Tekkub’s statements on his website and statement made by Zygor that I never had Tekkub permission to sell, or distribute the TourGuide addon is clearly false and there is an alterior motive as to why they would say that.

2. We also note that Tekkub had published the source code of TourGuide on http://www.github.com. One of the terms and conditions of opening an account with GitHub.com is that by setting the user’s repositories to be viewed publicly, the user agrees to allow others to use that user’s repositories to take a copy of source codes from software programs and develop it independently of that software (‘forking’). A copy of the terms and conditions for GitHub.com can be found at http://help.github.com/terms/.

Tekkub claimed that by “setting a repo to be viewed publicly is like packaging an addon in plaintext files… anyone can view it because there is no mechanism available to prevent them from doing so.”

However this statement is incorrect GitHub.com does have an option to set your repositories as private which is recommended by GitHub if you software proprietary. It is also clearly stated on GitHub and if you chose your repositories to be viewed by anyone (refer to screenshot below), you also declare that is an open source project (see section 1.) And the term forking is commonly known to the programming community here.

I forked Tekkub’s TourGuide repo from github to my own github account in January 2009.  If “forking” wasn’t allowed and if TourGuide is not “open source”, the wrong message is clearly sent to the public by hosting it on as a public repositories without any form of license. There are options in GitHub to protect your software to which Tekkub chose not to use.

3. On 3 April 2009 Tekkub was upset regarding the “forking” of TourGuide, I took action with removal of the public link and clearly stated I was still distributing it in my members area. I offered a solution such as licensing, and modification of TourGuide, these options were a possibility and I was under the understanding that these options were being considered.

We complied by removing the link and suggesting a solution and we were still within our rights to continue distributing as we still have permission, if our final email was unacceptable to Tekkub, then he should clearly state it. Which he didn’t and he admitted “chose not to pursue it“.

4. On 12 December 2009 Tekkub continued to take our donations, and also help us further in modifying by providing a code for TourGuide for our distribution in Dec 09.

This proves that there was no problem with us modifying and distributing the guide.

5. Tekkub also encouraged the renaming of TourGuide “In short, you f*ck with it, find a new name for it.” which was the issue that he had with us.

This further proves that Tekkub is not opposed to people modifying and distributing TourGuide.

6. Even after Zygor’s acquisition of TourGuide, Tekkub is not opposed to wow-pro distributing TourGuide but completely against to what we have done when it is the same thing.  Arguments that this is because wow-pro is not a commercial or non profit website is invalid, the large amount of free traffic that wow-pro received is helped by distributing tourguide which adds to their profit of banner advertising.

Again this further proves Tekkub is not opposed to people modifying and distributing TourGuide for commercial use.

Final comment on Tekkub

Our donation to Tekkub was only $500 and I admit it was far from enough, but the fact remains that it was a donation, something we didn’t have to give and our donation made up almost 50% of money that Tekkub received for the development of TourGuide as a public addon. We were ready to take it to the next level with licensing long before Zygor however Tekkub showed no interest.

On January 2010 I even contacted Tekkub to offer him a monthly sponsorship program to continue his development for TourGuide as a free addon for everyone to use. Tekkub never responded because obviously it was too late as he already sold it to Zygor.

As far as I know we were Tekkub’s #1 supporter, over the year we have also contributed to TourGuide by suggesting features and submitting bugs. I don’t think it was fair for me and others who have donated and contributed in anyway for the public project of TourGuide only to be shut out completely and then accused of copyright infringement in public.

I don’t know why Tekkub would state incorrect statements against us, I  did contact Tekkub to try to get more closure,  however he simply states he does not have the liberty to comment. I have also forwarded him this statement for him to correct or comment before posting publicly on this blog,  he didn’t reply.

Zygor Intention To File a $150,000 Lawsuit Against UltimateWoWGuide

1. On 18th Feb 2010, after Tekkub’s confirmation of Zygor’s acquisition of TourGuide on his website tekkub.net, we promptly stopped selling our leveling guide and complied with Zygor’s demands, as this was the only proof that we found that Zygor have acquired the rights to TourGuide.

2. On 22nd Feb 2010, I received a follow up letter from a Lawyer representing Zygor Guides LLC of their intention to file a lawsuit for $150,000 per infringed work and attorney’s fees.

To summarize, they state that.

  • I have infringed their copyright of TourGuide for the period of 12 Dec 2009 to 2 Feb 2010 (Period of just over 2 months)
  • I must pay $75,000 by 31 March 2010, and Zygor guides will agree not to bring the lawsuit against me.
  • I must agree to forever cease the use of TourGuide in anyway.

3. On 24th Feb 2010, Zygor filed DMCA claim against all of our YouTube videos. Videos that we created ourselves 100%, even the free how to do dailies videos that we put out, refer to picture below. The alleged infringing material consist of  an Blizzard’s icon image and quest name to which probably made up less than 1% of the total image.

4. On 5th Mar 2010 I responded with a letter from my lawyer stating that

  • We received the infringement notice prematurely and have already ceased distribution despite having permission from the original author.
  • We notified them that we will not pay $75,000 as it was unjustified and without merit.
  • We requested them to drop the matter because no copyright infringement was made against Zygor Guides LLC and we had already complied by removing traces of TourGuide from our server.

5. On 12th Mar 2010 Zygor’s Lawyer replied with additional demands instead.

  • Zygor’s lawyer finally provided proof of contract agreement between Zygor and Tekkub.
  • Zygor demanded that I agree to permanently cease and desist from reproducing, distributing, displaying and selling the TourGuide software or anything substantially similar to it. (meaning I must agree to never make / sell / give away any in-game leveling guide in any form ever again)
  • Zygor would reconsider the payment of $75,000 if we provided them with our full sales stats.
  • Zygor is open to alternative settlement if I contact him directly via email, if we don’t contact them to settle then they expect a check of $75,000 by 31 March 2010.

6. We sent the follow up letter on 25th Mar 2010, stating further evidence that we were within our rights to distribute TourGuide prior 18th Feb 2010.

Final Comments on Zygor

From the information I have,  Zygor obtain the rights to tourguide in 18th  December  (incorrectly stated as November in the screen shot below) and intentionally not notify dugiguides.com or anybody else.  So they can wait for 2 months to gain some sort of legal grounds for suing dugiguides.com  and maybe others  for 2 months worth of loss of income (refer to screenshot below)

Our current views remains that Zygor purpose of acquiring TourGuide is an intentional attempt to harm our Business and our affiliates incomes to force them to switch. Also an attempt to obtain $75,000 from dugiguides.com

I would like to comment futher however I prefer to stick to facts that I can back up with evidence.  The purpose of this post for you to know the facts and hopefully regain your confidence with dugiguides.com

I look forward to continue developing our own guides and addon and simply minding our own business.

– Dugi

    58 replies to "Zygor Guides Review Scam Dugi $150,000 Lawsuit"

    • k-rock

      thank you very much for taking the time to thoroughly with FACTS, screenshots. You provide customers of wow guide addons the facts and screenshots explaining what was going on from 2010 forward RE these great guide addons. I really enjoyed the zygor interface around 2011 better than wowpro. I thought it was craptastic when I saw you have to pay zygor to use the same info in a diff interface but dugi was more open and easy to access and not shady seeming.

    • fatboymicrochip

      To be absolutely honest, and to necro the kak out of this, this has been the ultimate decider between Zygor and Dugi for me. I’ve not used the guides I already have from Dugi for some time now but am starting a new set of alts. Some of my guildies use Zygor and some Dugi and it got me wondering which to use. I’ve done my homework and was going with Dugi’s subscription service again and saw this in my search results too so gave it a read. LOOOOOL! Not a chance I’m giving Zygor any of my cash, not after seeing the dodgy side of how they do business. And I’ll be making sure any Zygor fans in my circle are informed as well, just to make sure they’re informed as to where their monies are going.

      Dugi can expect a new monthly sub tonight as soon as I’m home from work. Dugi’s FTW!

    • Cevandri

      Was going to pickup a leveling guide. and going to take yours. was going with zygors but their prices is way 2 much for ally/horde ($60 usd) while u have a monthly subscription WHICH i was thinking of asking zygor if they had. after reading up comparison, urs seem the choice to pick. I tried their trial and using a guide seems awesome but they dont have good Multiboxing Feature (RAF) so Your Hard Leveling Guide would probably be awesome! You got yourself an customer. AT LEAST for minium of 1 month =)

    • Aleisha

      I enjoy what you guys are up too. This kind of clever work and coverage! Keep up the great works guys I’ve you guys to my personal blogroll.

    • SynErr

      I pirate Zygor’s guides, so they aren’t getting any money from me.

      • Tired

        @SynErr, Just to make sure I understand, because Dugi is right your commiting a crime?

    • Dugi (not copied, I've been using that name for 3-4 years xD)

      Hey, I don’t know if this is a little late. But I’m with you all the way, I haven’t actually used any of your guides. But from what I’ve heard, yours is definitely better. I’ve tried Zygors, just got the Joana’s one and copied and put an automatic feature in it… I’ll be with you all the way. Zygor just saw your guide and decided to get rights from Tekkub and then get you out of it to remove the competition.

      • DugisGuide

        Its never too late 🙂 , thank you for your support.

    • Souljacker

      After doing lengthy internet research (and using Jame’s guides for a long time), I finally decided on purchasing the packages offered here.

      I think Jame is fantastic and his guides on WoW-Pro are great. I also think that if those folks chose a more lucrative business model, they could spend more time producing a product that is more polished. I wanted such a product and so my research led me to two major guide distributors: Dugi and Zygor.

      I ended up choosing Dugi for reasons that weren’t limited to just the quality of the guides – because in all honesty the reviews on both are stellar. The dealbreaker for me was this issue and Zygor’s strongarm tactics. He didn’t have to make threats, and he didn’t have to be shady about the transaction for Tour Guide.

      He was, and he lost at least one potential customer because of it. I’ll stick with the Dugi product.

      I just hope it was worth it for Zygor.

    • andy

      me on the contrary love the fact that dugi showed us this. why? mostly because truth gets to the surface sooner or later, but the way as it is presented can totally change things. dugi’s just showing provable facts to prove himself honest and clean. u have all my support and sadly zygor has lost all my respect… as a worker, gamer, human being and everything else in the world. i wouldn’t definitely speak or answer posts any further if i were u. but i think this info was absolutely needed to clear things up now and in the future for your costumers and zygor’s costumers. and also, and for other posters: i guess if u have purchased dugi’s guides u have the right to now… and also have the right to not read what dugi says.

      i really can’t believe what this guy did…the amazing thing is that i was considering to purchase his guides for me and my bf between last week and this week, but now they won’t receive any scent from me, my bf, friends or guildies… he totally totally lost my respect and i thank u for posting this info. ***** competition’s freaking awful.

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