Zach Whalen writes today about a letter he received from Left Behind Games threatening legal action, received in response to his several posts about Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a controversial game about the army of God after the rapture. Zach posted the letter itself, and notes that it is a form letter sent to a number of people, including Tim Simpson, Radical Congruency, Raving Atheists, and left-wing uberblog Daily Kos. GamePolitics has a mention of the letters and I'm sure many comments will follow over there.

I haven't read all the articles in question, but the cease and desist is the same in all cases, suggesting that the company is fishing.

Zach's far more cordial than I would have been, inviting readers to suggest possible legitimately false statements he may have made in his many posts about the game. I wrote a few pages about Left Behind in my book Persuasive Games, focusing on the ambiguous religious representation rather than the more incendiary features that others have raised a torch over. I met with the Left Behind crew at E3 a few years ago when I was researching the book, before the game was released, and asked a bunch of questions, some difficult. They seemed rational and understanding of the inevitable criticism of their work then, so I'm a little surprised to see this festering lawyer strategy. I don't know how the game has sold, but maybe they are just acting out their own disappointment that it didn't move as absurdly many copies as the namesake book.

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