It is with great disappointment that we must report that we will not be attending this year's 2008 Gen Con.

In February of this year, we received notice that Gen con LLC had filed Bankruptcy as a direct result of a law suit brought on by George Lucas of Star Wars Fame.

As any good business person would, we read the many charges of the suit.  We discovered that apart from allegedly never paying the $500,000. license fee for Star Wars Celebration, Gen Con LLC also allegedly failed to pay $180,000. charity auction fees to Make - A - Wish.  This accusation would fall under the "Tort of Conversion" a legal term for misappropriation of funds and in this allegation the funds from sick and dying children that benefit from Make - A - Wish Foundation's charity auctions.

Gen Con LLC also had numerous creditors.  Too many to list here.  Being legally savvy especially when it comes to bankruptcy filing, we know that a "Temporary Relief from Creditors" which is what Gen Con LLC posted it would apply for, is just that 'temporary'.  Until the objection period is over.

We sent the current President of Gen Con LLC an e-mail and requested that they hold our booth's fee until they at least were confirmed for their reorganization plan and to let us know when the objection hearing was held and over.  We know that legally any money given to a company during this temporary relief stage is at complete RISK until the plan is confirmed by the court.

We received a response which basically said we wanted to know too much.  They would not provide the notice.  Further, if we chose to wait and hold or protect our investment we risk losing any both placement based on our "priority points".  We have been building these priority points for the last 15 years.  The letter ended with a (in our opinion) 'catty' comment to the effect that "all conventions are a risk".

So after being threatened with losing our space and priority points, potentially losing all our cash investment and dealing with an arrogant, evasive and tough luck attitude, we withdrew our fee.

It is our hope that a new management buys Gen Con and returns it back to an ethical and professional standard.  Until that time, we will not support a company who allegedly fails to pay revenues from auctions to Make - a - Wish, let alone handles their business the way the did with us.

* In an added note, after attending Origins Gaming convention, we found out that several other vendor exhibitors also held their fees and did NOT receive the reply that we did.  Then again, we are not Hasbro or other larger vendors.  We discovered that the other vendors also opted to withhold their booth fees until it was announced that an extension for the hearing was approved making Gen Con 2008 in the clear for now, those vendors maintained their booth space options and suffered no penalties to our knowledge. What a surprise.

 Thank You