The eSport Partners situation is a great case study for any company who is interested in what NOT to do when you find yourself the target of former employees who make random comments on blog posts. Sometimes the best response to negative feedback is no response. Other times it makes sense to respond. Let me know what you think about this situation:

Almost eight months ago we wrote a post titled, “The eSports Partners Comment Debacle.” The post detailed how I had written a short post indicating that eSports had raised money (actually debt). The post was short and positive. Several disgruntled employees (former I assume) commented on the post indicating linking to lawsuits filed by various governmental organizations. According to the suits, the company didn’t seem to treat their workers fairly. Truth be told, the comments seemed a little like sour grapes and I didn’t really give them a second thought.

Almost a year later lawyers from eSports Partners contacted me and demanded that I remove the post and comments as well as provide the identities of the employees who made the comments. After a few conversations I decided to comply with their request and remove the post and comments, but I replaced it with a scanned copy of the demand letter. The lawyers contacted me once again and threatened to sue me if I didn’t remove their letter. I refused.

So what is new? If you Google eSport Partners the third result is my post containing the letter from their lawyers. So what? Almost monthly I get emails from potential employees asking for more information about the company. Here is an example message (some details changed to protect the identity of the person):

> —– Original Message —–
> From: /redacted /
> To: /redacted/
> Sent: August 3, 2007 4:49:44 PM GMT-0600
> Subject: ESports Partners
>
> Hey Alex,
> I saw your retracted post on Esports and I’m going in
> there on Thursday for an interview. Can’t find any
> web history on the posting you had on them and was
> hoping you would fill me in on any information that would
> be helpful to me.
>
> I have a kid and a husband, so I take my career
> considerations seriously. Any way you could fill me
> in on what the context was on the post?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> /redacted/

Of course I can’t say much, other than explain the situation because I don’t know much. I do know that the company really mishandled the response. In this case I believe eSports Partners should have left well enough alone and ignored the comments.