Local gaming reseller DataBlitz was raided by elements of the PNP last Monday evening over supposed “unauthorized selling of NBA 2K13 copies” that another local company, X-Play, was distributing. The raid was authorized on the grounds of unfair competition because DataBlitz was not an authorized reseller of NBA 2K13. X-Play says that “this is not a knee-jerk reaction from XPlay. In fact, meetings were held with Datablitz President, Winston Lim and his team to become XPlay’s primary partner for NBA 2K13. Datablitz key executives Sandra Lu and Orpha Oambas even participated in XPlay’s distributor conferences and got all the marketing and distribution plans of the company.”
For their part, DataBlitz has said that this is not true, and that although they did meet with X-Play, it was X-Play that initiated the meetings. Furthermore, DataBlitz were only asked to participate in meetings and/or to join XPlay’s so-called “marketing programs” (which are really nothing more than just glamorized parlor game events). DataBlitz participated in the meetings and “marketing programs” out of courtesy to X-Play and no such thing as “primary partnership”, whatsoever was ever discussed, offered, nor penned on paper, whatsoever.
This is unfortunate because DataBlitz is one of the last bastions of legal software, as the company has been serving the needs of local gamers for far longer than X-Play. The tide of public opinion is also against X-Play on this one, because most of the reactions have been overwhelmingly for DataBlitz. A cursory check at the comment section of their statement has angry gamers complaining and asking why the company did the raid in the first place.