I used to play this game with a friend of mine, and once he discovered the gold farmer tie, he stopped playing. I kept playing until I hit the eventual wall in the game where you literally cannot progress your character without a ton of this items that are incredibly rare drops, but heavily marketed on the in-game store. I do like that I see less of the racey ads. Those were ridiculous. He made a blog post explaining why he quit, and included several of the ads in case anyone is curious. http://blindsignals.com/index.php/2009/07/evony-com-or-why-im-quitting/

I have no idea why anyone would could click on one of these links to the game other than by accident. Am I the only straight male on the planet who isn't tempted by "bewbs"? It's pretty clear just by the absurd marketing they have on their banner ads (almost a parody of the sex sells tactic) that at the very least the game isn't relying on quality to sell itself. Even if it linked to a good online game, I would still feel...skeezy supporting it due to the fat-boy market it is trying to sell to. Still, the article is worthwhile and I am glad you wrote it. More people need to know about this sort of thing before it blows up to bigger proportions.

People sure have a lot of time on their hands nowadays...

For the people that click on the Evony ads, I am more worried about the other things stuck to their hands. Not time. I'm sorry, that was too vulgar for a community as respectable as Bitmob.

Well, Alex, where did you see your first Evony add? Honestly, this vid is pretty much what I did when I first saw the adds, sans the signing up. Saw the pictures, had a laugh, left. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIV8OYNEQg0&feature;=player_embedded

That's incredible. I knew Evony and its proprietors were scumbags but I had no idea just how evil they were. That guy's got some mad investigative skills. It's amazing what incredible lengths they've gone to in order to try and hide who they really are. I hope they eventually get crushed but people like this are very good at slipping through the hands of justice.

@Gerry: It's sad. The guy who made the video is currently being sued by Evony via a lawyer based in Australia.