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Leaks are a ubiquitous part of gaming these days, but Magic The Gathering owner Wizards of the Coast has had a more aggressive response than most. The company apparently sent Pinkerton agents to retrieve unreleased Magic cards that a YouTuber recently showed off in a video.
According to a response video by the YouTuber, Dan Cannon, the agents showed up at their house and frightened the content creator’s wife. The agents then repossessed the cards and told Cannon to take the videos down. Cannon also told Kotaku that the agents threatened them with jail time and up to $200,000 in fines if they did not cooperate, and that they wanted to search their entire collection of cards for stolen property. Wizards of the Coast confirmed to Kotaku and other outlets that the Pinkertons were employed as a part of its investigation.
Today, Pinkerton advertises itself as a security and risk management firm under the umbrella group Securitas AB. The firm is arguably better-known for the role it played in fighting against organized labor in the 19th and early 20th centuries, serving as a private law enforcement firm for Gilded Age industrialists who fought against unionization. A 2020 report from Motherboard said that Amazon employed the firm to spy on its warehouse workers amid attempts to unionize. Earlier this year, Wizards of the Coast came under fire when the company attempted to change the legal framework surrounding D&D third-party content, and it was ultimately forced to abandon that action.
