Orrendi casini fra GSC e l'autore di "S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Southern Comfort"

Questo il messaggio diffuso da GSC, attraverso la propria pagina di Facebbok dedicata a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. e rivolto all'autore del romanzo "S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Southern Comfort":

 Dear Stalkers! GSC Game World greatly appreciates S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game fan’s community. We deeply admire your enthusiasm in uploading films-stories to the Internet, the quantity and variety of novels and stories written by the fans of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe. In our group, we are aiming at promoting your works and hope that the support of other gamers will give a push to your creating efforts. 
However, currently we observe the situation, when some people use S.T.A.L.K.E.R brand for personal financial enrichment, violating all intellectual property and trademark laws and rights. 
More than year ago the game fan from Hungary asked us to help promoting his first book in English and the website dedicated to this book called S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Southern Comfort, which we did with pleasure. Oleg Yavorskiy, the Head of PR department, thus made the announcements on our official and unofficial Internet resources about the book’s website and its future release. When the author put the book on Amazon, we asked him why he started to sell (!) the book without any agreements with GSC Game World as the right-holder.
Balash Pataki assured us, that the book like any other fan-content will be available for free, and he used the Amazon only for the convenience of the owners of Kindle. Unfortunately, there is no possibility to share the book for free on the Amazon, but he will keep the minimum price, and if the book is sold well, he will immediately sign a contract with GSC Game World. Regrettably, Mr. Pataki turned out to be a liar.
Everyone who bought the book can see the writing on the very first page saying: © 2011 GSC Game World and used by courtesy of GSC Game World. All Rights Reserved «No portion of this publication may be reproduced, by any means, without the express written permission of the copyright holder(s).» Therefore, there were no free books giveaway, neither there was a low price ($7,5 now) on Amazon. 
We discussed this issue with Mr. Pataki several times, but he was first saying that the sales were not more than a few copies per month; and when we received the information on the actual sales, he threatened us to start the massive PR-activity: “the fan is harmed by a big and evil company”. 
In April, he was already selling two books, having not even notified GSC Game World about the release of the second one. Now, after several months of negotiations we realized that the author is not going to lower the book’s price, or give out the book for free (as it is normally done with any other fanworks). 
We would like to officially announce that the books by Balash Pataki do not have any official rights or permissions from the GSC Game World to use our trademarks and copyrights to sell (!) the book. Above all, we are going to protect the rights of the fans who honestly share their creations for free, abiding by the copyright laws. There are dozens and hundreds of such fans, and we cannot allow infringing upon their rights.
We do not want to be considered an incarnation of evil, when we’re caring for equal rights for our fans. This is why we are addressing Balash Pataki through our group with the request to remove his books from any sales networks. And if he wants to continue promoting his works, he should do it, sharing his books for free, as the other authors do".

Una brutta storia che ha fatto, ovviamente, il giro del web in pochissime ore e che ha coinvolto, fin da subito, ogni community dedicata a S.T.A.L.K.E.R., compresa quella situata sui forum di GSC. La risposta fornita, a più riprese dall'autore dei libri in questione, Balazs Pataki (Zulu Bravo sul forum GSC), è stata proporzionale al problema. Ad esempio:

Guys, the Sidorovitch quote sums it up. There are witnesses and written documents proving that every single statement GSC, probably Sergiy Grushko, has made in that post is completely false. To cut a long story short: the sales of GSC's new official book suck, it gets bad reviews, and the only solution GSC can think of is killing the competition - my two non-official books, written and sold with GSC's explicit and written permission, income-share agreement included. These false accusations against my person were made on a Facebook page with almost 30000 followers, hence I decided to sue GSC for libel.

Insomma, un nuovo capitolo problematico si aggiunge alla già non facile vita di S.T.A.L.K.E.R, GSC e tutti quelli che ci girano intorno (compresi noi stessi, a questo punto). Spero che i malintesi fra GSC e Balazs possano risolversi nella maniera più rapida e indolore per tutti.