Daybreak Games Company CEO John Smedley responded to critics of his threats made to Finnish computer hacker Julius “Zeekill” Kivimaki on Reddit Thursday.
Kivimaki, 17, was convicted of 50,700 charges related to cybercrime and given a two-year suspended sentence for it. Smedley alleges that Kivimaki is “the guy that brought down my flight with a bomb threat” in August 2014.
“I've heard the entire recording where he convinced an airline customer service agent there was a bomb on the plane," Smedley wrote. "He also in conjunction with others has sent me pictures of my father's grave with nasty stuff on it. I've had my entire credit history put out on the internet including my SSN and my [family's] info. We've had multiple social networks and other things hacked and had my family members called.
“I've also been swatted (multiple times) and had over 50 false credit applications submitted in my name and had to deal with the ramifications of what happens to your credit when this kind of thing happens. It's not good. And to top it all off they decided to submit false tax returns.”
According to Smedley, Kivimaki is not only responsible for damage done him and his family, but to companies and game developers, too.
“He's been involved for years in every kind of terrible thing you can imagine including Carding, hacking, swatting people all over the world,” Smedley wrote. “He's also participated in a major way in DDOS attacks that caused a lot of grief for gamers and a lot of economic damage to the companies that make and run games.”
Smedley published a series of tweets Wednesday in regards to Kivimaki’s sentencing where he threatened legal action against the 17-year-old and his family in addition to calling him a “little dirtbag.” This spawned a “minor DDOS” on Daybreak's servers from Lizard Squad, the hacking group Kivimaki purports to be a part of.
Getting a minor DDOS. We're working on it. should be back up soon. #annoying
— John Smedley (@j_smedley) July 9, 2015
Shortly before Smedley sent the above tweet, Lizard Squad tweeted the following:
Getting reports that the attack is affecting all Daybreak Game Company games. Hope you like our present John Smedley (the CEO).
— Lizard Squad (@LizardLands) July 9, 2015
Lizard Squad then called Smedley out hours later:
The only way we'll forever hold our peace with John Smedley is if he travels to Krasnodar and bows down to zeekill.
— Lizard Squad (@LizardLands) July 10, 2015
Some players of Daybreak’s games, like H1Z1, are placing blame on Smedley for them not being able to play due to his comments made about Kivimaki.
But, Smedley has little remorse for them and even less for Kivimaki and others like him.
“So you guys can debate this,” he wrote on Reddit, “and that's all well and good, but meanwhile this shit is real to my life and my family's life and I'm sure as hell not lying down for it for a second. I've been working with law enforcement to put him and others into jail where they belong. Some of them are minors which makes it tough. Most of them are outside the US, which makes it tougher. But I'm patient and I'm going to be relentless about this.”
