Wargaming Threatens to Ban Social Groups for Mentioning Armored Warfare

Hello warriors,

a nice little scandal started on the Vkontakte social network. For those who do not know: Vkontakte (transl. "in contact", is also known as "Russian Facebook") is a social network that is widely popular in CIS countries (more than Facebook anyway) and is the major social network to advertise on when doing business in Russia.

Recently, an interesting article with screenshots was published in the SMMshtiki group (https://vk.com/wall-43503600_162265) describing the incident as such:

There is another VK group called "Podslushano World of Tanks" (http://vk.com/overhear_wot) - a World of Tanks fan group by the look of things (jokes and such) and a BIG one at that (146 thousand followers). Recently, an administrator of this WoT group turned to the SMM group (which apparently deals with these matters) with a question. He was contacted by a representative of Wargaming social network department and was asked not to distribute any materials about Armored Warfare (or - specifically - to delete posts about Armored Warfare). When he asked why and whether it is illegal, the representative told him that:

"We as a social network department are following all the major World of Tanks communities and we are not interested in losing players to other projects by the means of communities, using our brand and content, which are subjected to intellectual property law".

In other words - if you write about World of Tanks, you better not mention Armored Warfare. The representative continues that if they do not comply, the group might be cancelled like this group was: (https://vk.com/wotclear) - he specifically mentions this example.

The threatened administrator was NOT happy and turned for help to Vkontakte support service. There they told him that Wargaming has no such right to do that and that you can post whatever you want in the group, on which the Wargaming representative reacted by forcing the administrator to remove EVERYTHING connected to World of Tanks (including the group name) from the group or face a ban.

So there you have it - you better not mention Armored Warfare anywhere or Wargaming will ban your ass.

My opinion about all of this is that they may be both Tank games and direct competitors but also they represent Tanks of different eras. I believe they can coexist. Armored Warfare is not going to steal the love I have for World of Tanks and vice-versa. But Hey! The more they fight the better for us customers right?  What do you think about all of this?