You are in:
It’s Halle time!
The rumour going around World of Games on day one was vague at best. The word was, AGI – specifically Jens Halle, Managing Director – was planning something for 1pm on day two. Nobody seemed to know any more than this. Day two, and the rumour had gathered both speed and weight – we now knew it would involve the theft of AGI’s intellectual property, and copied cabinets.
Many people envisaged Jens taking a sledgehammer to a row of cabinets, but the reality was more spectacular. Outside the Crocus at 1pm, Jens held court, reading out a prepared statement.
He said: “My name is Jens Halle and I am a Managing Director of Austrian Gaming Industries GmBH which belongs to the Novomatic Group of Companies. As you probably know, our group is one of the world leaders in developing and producing first-class gaming equipment, and over the last few years our products have been very successful in Russia. Unfortunately, we have learned that there is a chance that some unscrupulous manufacturers and unauthorised distributors are likely to offer pirated copies of our products. As part of our anti-piracy campaign we would like to inform everybody that Novomatic Group of Companies, in connection with other first class international gaming equipment suppliers, will continue to aggressively prosecute with lawsuits and actions against pirate copies and any person who infringe their intellectual property. As you can imagine, we are very concerned that our valued customers could be misled by any possibly pirate products. In order to prove our intentions are serious, we will now destroy several machines purchased in Russia which are very similar to the original products.”
And with the help of a very large digger, that’s exactly what they did, scarring the car park quite beautifully in the process. Surely the highlight of the show!
