Getting the spoilers spoiled

A little more than a week ago something happened that hasn’t really happened since the release of Judgement (yeah, that was a while ago). Someone who had access to the “godbook” (basically a file which all the cards of a given set) for New Phyrexia presented it to the public which instantaneously gave the whole Magic community access to entire set. It was a little saddening to miss out on a otherwise pretty entertaining spoiler season that lead up to every sets prerelease, but I didn’t think too much about it.

Then last Friday Wizards dropped the bomb:

(borrowed from http://www.svenskamagic.com)

That was some pretty crazy stuff that got announced there. If you want to know more about the actual leaking, you can read about in depth here. It’s a pretty interesting story so I recommend you to read the article.

So, Wizards managed to pinpoint the origin to the leak and the company wasn’t exactly slow with putting down the foot. The punishment for the people involved wasn’t exactly mild. 2010 World Champion Guillaume Matignon received a 3 (!) year suspension from DCI sanctioned play and Pro Tour Champion Guillaume Wafo-Tapa along with two other less known players each got a 6 month suspension.

I’m not going to comment on what I think about the punishment because I think there has been too little unbiased facts and reasoning about the the whole procedure for me to take a stand. I have read stuff that makes me feel like the punishment was a bit harsh for some of the players but other information make me feel that punishment was…well, fair. Anyhow, the fact about this whole incident that really made my eyes go saucer size was this:

As you all know, the “God Book” contains every card from an upcoming set, and this confidential material is trusted to very few people in order to keep the contents concealed until the proper time. As a writer for Lotus Noir Magazine, Matignon had access to the book in order to write about the upcoming release. – taken from Wizards announcement.

So, Wizards hands out this delicate information to players like Matignon?

http://twitter.com/#!/LuisScottVargas/status/63766817805582336

Exactly.

I don’t understand how Wizard can justify handing out information that can greatly benefit players in upcoming tournaments like this. I mean, there is a reason why people at R&D and other Wizards associates are not allowed to play in DCI sanctioned events. And the step from those people to a guy like Matignon isn’t that big in my mind. Are Wizards just saying that it’s okay that a (relatively) small percentage of players get this advantages against the rest of us? I can’t say I’m happy knowing that and I’m surely not the only one. I mean, I’m not in a “oh, I’m quitting Magic beacuse of this!”-state but this is troubling news.

This also leads to questions like, are there more pro players like Matignon that are handed this kind of information and if so, how many? I think this incident has lead into more questions that are yet to be answered and that we definitely haven’t heard the end of it.