Second Life – Ozimals closes

Posted on by Inara Pey
Ozimals donated a limited edition bunny and Puffling to help raise funds during Filling the Cauldron, to help Second Life creator Elicio Ember and his family

Update, May 18th, 2017: As per the  comment below from Neobokrug Elytis, further information pertaining to the situation has been published via Google Docs here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-_7k-VigxufaTM5b18yVXpvZU0/view, offering additional information on the situation from the claimant’s perspectives.

Update, May 17th: As per the comment below from Sue W, the Ozimal blog, including the post referred to in this article, has been cleared down.

Sonya Marmurek indirectly brought this to my attention via an image posted to her Flickr stream: Ozimals, the brand of breedable rabbits and Pufflings is closing its doors with immediate effect.

The cause is apparently a Cease and Desist letter forwarded to Ozimals founder Malkavyn Eldritch. No specific details of the cause of the letter have been made available. However, Malkavyn broke the news in an Ozimals blog post on Tuesday, May 16th, 2017, which reads in part:

At 8:00 am on Monday, May 15, 2017, I received a Cease and Desist letter from legal counsel representing Edward Distelhurst and Akimeta Ltd. This letter demands that I cease all use of Ozimals intellectual property.

I don’t personally agree with this claim, but I do not have the means to fight this in court, therefore I have no choice but to comply.

As of the morning of Wednesday, May 17, 2017, my products and their associated games will cease to function.

This means:

All databases supporting the bunnies and Pufflings will be off-line.

Support, both in-world and through the ticket portal, will cease.

All Ozimals in-world groups will be closed.

Pufflings will cease to function.

Any bunny who is Everlasting will continue to function, as he or she does now: without cost.

Any bunny who is not Everlasting will be unable to eat and will hibernate within 72 hours.

This is not the first time Ozimals have faced a legal situation, having been involved in a lengthy dispute with Amaretto Horses which ran from late 2010 through 2013.

Alongside her image, Sonya notes:

If you read this before it’s too late, there’s free eternal timepieces and other goodies in the Ozimals main store to make sure you can keep your bunny pets with you even when the servers go down.

Whatever the ups and downs or ins and outs of this situation, Ozimals have proven extremely popular across Second Life, and  Malkavyn closes his post with an apology and thanks to all those who have supported Ozimals over the years:

It was never my intention for the time we’ve all spent with the bunnies and the Pufflings to end like this. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of the support this community has given me over the last seven years. I wish there was more I could say.

Published by Inara Pey

Eclectic virtual world blogger with a focus on Second Life, VR, virtual environments and technology.

15 thoughts on “Second Life – Ozimals closes”

  1. Ozimals was an amazing company and it is heartbreaking to see it go. It’s sad to see a couple people for whatever reason ruin not only Ozimals enjoyment of the Bunnies and Pufflings but the many many other people who invested time and money and heart into breeding the ones they wanted. Pretty selfish people that will have to look in the mirror one day. Thank you for a fair and objective article. Rare to find these days.

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  2. As of today May 17th, it looks like all the posts in Ozimals blog have been deleted, the linked one too. Or at least that’s what I’m seeing now. The main store is still there, with the free tools to turn the pets into permanent pets.
    So few years ago Ozimals vs Amaretto ended up on newspapers and even on Wikipedia. Now it is Ozimals going out of business because of a C&D. I don’t know the details of this case and what I.P. claims there are exactly, but Edward Distelhurst was involved in 2012 case too:
    https://casetext.com/case/amaretto-ranch-breedables-v-ozimals-inc

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    1. Thanks for the update on the Ozimals website. I’ll add a note to reflect this.

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  3. We have been named, and I have been authorized by the other individual to reply on their behalf.

    In regards to Ozimals Cease and Desist, sorry for the delayed reply. We wanted to get all of our facts in order and properly reviewed before we made a public statement. As such here is our press release on the matter. We invite you to examine the facts and documentation, and decide for yourself. http://bit.ly/2qwGLmy

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    2. I read your version of the “truth” but for those of us that were on that ride with them…you two are still the assholes. You were clearly out to drive them out of business and you have succeeded. Don’t try to play the victim as we all remember you from when you worked there. Go cry to your friends maybe they will pity you.

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    1. Capitalist greed at its best…
      Mr. Distelhurst could have stopped suing at any time, when enough is enough, but no…
      So stating that “We wish things could have gone another way” is a blatant lie.
      It’s clear he wanted to decimate Ozimals and the people, who by the way gave him the opportunity to be involved in an innovative and ambitious project, by any (legal) means necessary.
      It’s already really shitty behaviour to start a competing product to one you were a part of creating (filing a DMCA was obviously the only way to try and stop you), but this goes beyond evil…
      I mean, when forcing people to sign over their company to you and eventually even sell their house, your claims might be right (legally), but you as a person are not reasonable, let alone respectful.
      It becomes very clear in every statement of the ‘facts’ in that ‘press release’ that there is a grudge and that a lot of these court cases are revenge for the initial DMCA.
      It’s also obvious that Ozimals did not want to pay anything to such a vengeful person, honestly I wouldn’t either. And so, not complying to court orders made it worse for them.
      The very last paragraph is just kicking some more when they are down. Exactly what is to be expected from such a character.
      So open your champagne bottles, Mr. Distelhurst, you’ve won and ruined a few people’s livelyhood in a legal way.
      Shame on you!

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      1. Ozimals could have also paid me what they owed me, by contract, and by settlement agreement. Why should I accept less? The lawsuit would have absolutely stopped 7 years ago if they would have just paid me what we agreed upon.

        I was only mentioned in the documents of the Amaretto court case, in reference to my case in Texas. I had absolutely nothing to do with their product. And if you would actually read the press release I was against the entire idea of the DMCA claim.

        A settlement agreement is an agreement between both parties; Ozimals and I both agreed on the terms. Giving them 7 years to make it right is beyond respectful.

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      2. If you commission someone to do all of your programming work, and then you stop paying them, lie about your need to pay them, and waste 7 years in court repeatedly making bogus settlement offers and dodging court orders, you deserve to get decimated. They got sanctioned for submitting fraudulent evidence multiple times, and you think they’re just innocent business owners being bullied by this out-of-control litigation nut? Please.

        Ozimals could have continued. He owned the company at that point. But the “owners” decided that instead of doing the right thing and handing over the company as they agreed to do, they would just destroy it and blame their own programmer whom they stopped paying, lied to repeatedly, and now are actively trying to smear.

        Programmers do not work for free just because you don’t want to pay them anymore. If you don’t agree, then don’t run a company.

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  5. Neo was paid for the time he worked there and then he quit. He was not the original scripter even. When he arrived he didn’t think much work needed to be done even. He only worked for Ozimals a short time before he quit and was paid in full. He probably ran through that money and decided he needed more money. Aki joined with Neo claiming she has a license agreement with them. I like to see it. As for all those sanctions? They kept asking for their monthly statements from Linden Labs, banks etc. They don’t crank those out but once a month and never pre or post release. So each month they had to wait for it to be published. Then there was the hardship of forcing a legally blind man to constantly fly to Austin, TX even after it was requested a change of venue so he wouldn’t have to force someone to fly with him and help him around. You can keep preaching Neo you were handsomely paid for 8 months of work.

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    1. The license agreement is attached to the original complaint as “Exhibit A”. The link to it is “Link to Complaint” on the second page of the press release.

      Meanwhile, we now know exactly why Linden Lab wrote their TOS the way they did…

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      1. Ms. Piper we want Aki’s license. We could care less about Neo. He was paid for his 8 months of work. I work two years to make what he was paid and I’ve been teaching 32 years. Aki claims she has a license let’s see it.

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