"Having past 'legal experiences' with SEGA, I can say without a doubt in my mind that this Mark Grieg guy did this all himself - his Blue Hedgehog Network was all hype, and he was going to do the same thing with the MMO - he just wants to see his name plastered on every news website. However, this time it got out of hand, Sega caught wind, and he knows that if he admitted to being liable for all of this, he would be stuck with some huge court fines and what the lawyers call 'treble damages'. Therefore, he's trying to pass it off as the result of a hacker/insider to try and protect himself."
-SSNTails
Panovation Studios
Thats right, Panovation Studios. If you've never heard of them, don't be suprised, they have not made a single video game since they claim to have "Begun operations" In March of 2004.
Panovation Studios is a company that does not exist, makes no product and earns no money. In all the years their company claims to have been around they have never even managed to put a complete website for themselves online (its usually a blank page or a claim that the site will be finished by some date which has already past). The "chairman" of this "company" is a "man" named "Mark Grieg" who does not appear to be a game developer at all. He has made a few websites and makes a lot of absurd claims that he is an employee of multiple different companies. The truth about Mark is that he is actually just a 24 year old kid with no real education or experience to speak of. He weighs 120 pounds and has probably spent his entire life in front of a computer making websites to brag about himself and his "accomplishments" which seem to mostly be made up of things that either never happened or that he still hasn't finished. Unless I miss my guess, I would say that mark has never had a real job for more than a few months, knows nothing about video game development and probably will never manage to release a single game if he lives to be 100 years old.
All of this is information which you can get from Mark's personal website located HERE. You will notice this site is yet another of his projects that has never been finished. His section on his "education" is unfinished (probably because it would be empty anyway) and he even has a little section on Panovation Studios where he lists off several "projects" this company has supposedly completed. Funny thing though, if you search for any of those "projects" you won't find a single one of them. One such project is "Pinchy's Advent Chores" which is a game he has been hyping since before he was even using the name Panovation but nobody has ever seen this game (or any of the other games he claims to have made). If you go to the actual Panovation Website you will see it is once again just a blank page with the logo on it, no sign of any of these games or projects to be found. It seems that the only purpose behind any of these absurd websites is to hype Mark's skills so he can hit people up for jobs/money, two things he appears to have little hope of getting.
Besides the fake Panovation and his incomplete personal website Mark also owns several other domains. One of these is his WAY over hyped Jappleng University where he claims people can "learn about japan and its culture for FREE" a claim which is somewhat marred by the fact he thinks that Japanese culture revolves around Sonic the Hedgehog, magna cartoons and his own unfinished games. He also owned several other domains, one of which was a Japanese porn website (which he conveniently neglected to mention on his resume) and another was his original website "The Blue Hedgehog Network" which has been dead and offline for many, MANY years. The funny part is that he still claims his Blue Hedgehog Network as one of the "projects" of Panovation Studios even though it died before he ever "started" Panovation Studios. Its amazing to me that every single website he owns seems to exist only for the purpose of his own unjustified self aggrandisement but not a single one of them has ever been completed or done anything useful or productive in any way, shape or form.
The 'Sonic ORPG' Hoax
Of course there are a lot of asshats on the internet who hype themselves up despite having no real talent or ambition so Mark isn't exactly unique in this sense. You may be wondering how I know him or why I would even give a shit about his crappy little network of unfinished websites.
Well our buddy Mark used to be a huge Sega fanboy back in the day and like a lot of Sega Fanboys his exploits were quite obnoxious. The thing that was unique about Mark though is WHO he tormented with his obnoxious behavior. Where as most Sega fanboys would troll the rest of the internet with their rants about how Sega's next piece of hardware wouldn't be a total failure like all of their previous ones had been, Mark turned the tables on the Sega community by choosing to troll his own fellow Sega fans! He started this with his "Blue Hedgehog Network" that was "all hat and no cattle" so to speak. But what really sky rocketed him into infamy among his fellow Sega Fanboys was his Sonic MMORPG hoax.
This was how it went down...
A user of the Official Sega forums named "Mondo-Cool" was contacted by our buddy Mark who wanted to "leak" an "interview" to him about a new Sonic the Hedgehog online game he was working on. I've already mentioned how ignorant and gullible Sega fans are, so rather than ask why the "chairman" of a "company" that is developing a major online game would want to do an interview with someone who isn't even part of the media, Mondo-Cool instantly ran off with his "leaked interview" to tell everyone on the official Sega forums about this awsome new Sonic Online RPG that was being developed by Panovation Studios. The Panovation Studios website was also updated with this image which was supposedly a "beta" version of the website Mark was planning to eventually put online to add to the credence of the rumor. Notice in the "recent headlines" section where it says "Sonic ORPG" announced and below it where it has a picture of Dr. Robotdick or whatever his name was.
The Sega forums exploded in stupidity as Sega fans began to argue between each other on if this game was legit or not. Some people said it couldn't possibly be anything more than an "unofficial" fan made game while others stated it was nothing but a prank. Of course there are always those few diehard Sega fans who want another Sonic game so bad they don't care where it comes from and they fought violently to prove this game was "official" and really was going to be made. Eventually the Sega forum moderators cracked down, denounced the whole thing as a rumor and told everyone to "STFU" about it. But the incident got enough attention that several Sega fan sites and even some legit news sites like Game Spot began to post news stories reporting on the rumor of a "Sonic ORPG" being in development. Mark himself even contacted several of these news sites to address concerns about these rumors. One arguement aginst the possiblity of this game being real was that Sega had not issued a license for such a game to be developed. Mark's reply to this was that Sega HAD issued a license for a game to be made but had done so when his "company" was known as "The Blue Hedgehog Network" and was supposedly given a license to develop a website (which by some perverted logic he believed also gave him the rights to develop a game). These rumors swirled and became ever larger until finally Sega themselves caught wind of it.
After seeing discussion of a Sonic game they knew nobody was allowed to make under any circumstances on an official site like Game Spot, Sega cracked down and sent legal threats to Mark, telling him to knock his crap off. Mark instantly backpedaled on everything he said before, deined everything (even going so far as to claim that the original "interview" with Mondo-Cool never happened, nor the additional interviews he gave to numerous news sites) and tried to blame it all on "either a hacker or an insider" according to Mark's own words.
You can still read about the original announcement of the game by Mark HERE and his later denial of the game HERE as well as one of the interviews where he claimed to have a license for the Sonic game HERE in the internet archive. Although comments on those articles are now disabled, that site is actually where I originally found the quote used at the top of this page where another Sega fanboy said: "Having past 'legal experiences' with SEGA, I can say without a doubt in my mind that this Mark Grieg guy did this all himself - his Blue Hedgehog Network was all hype, and he was going to do the same thing with the MMO - he just wants to see his name plastered on every news website. However, this time it got out of hand, Sega caught wind, and he knows that if he admitted to being liable for all of this, he would be stuck with some huge court fines and what the lawyers call 'treble damages'. Therefore, he's trying to pass it off as the result of a hacker/insider to try and protect himself." It was clear even then to pretty much everyone that Mark was a liar who had intentionally orchestrated this entire hoax himself, probably just because he was an attention whore. It seems the previous failure of his Blue Hedgehog Network had turned the Sega community aginst him and they weren't about to make the mistake of trusting him twice. Mark seems to have made it a goal of his to steer clear of Sega and its fanbase ever since this incident.
Mark's Fake WHOIS Information
After enough official news sites started to report on Mark's hoax, I figured that since my site was about Sega fanboys and Sega Fanboys had been up in arms about this incident that it had to deserve atleast a brief mention on my website. At first I was inclined just to laugh at all the Sega fanboys who bought into the hoax but after looking at it a bit myself I wondered who this "Mark Grieg" guy was and how in the world it was that he was getting away with this kind of crap. I did a WHOIS lookup on his site and posted the results of it on my news section. It was clear that the address that was listed on the WHOIS search was a home address which lead me to believe this was in fact what it appeared to be: Just some kid with an obviously fake "company" trying to get attention.
For awhile nothing else happened with Panovation or Mark's hoax. Mark quickly faded into the background as the Sega community had obviously become tired of him and his antics. But about a month later out of the blue I began to receive emails with legal threats from Mark asking that I remove my comments about him and the results of the WHOIS search from my site. He even gave me a deadline! I replied to the email telling Mark that despite his suggestions to the contrary there was nothing illegal about a WHOIS search and if he wanted me to take anything I said about him down I expected an apology first. Mark responded to that by creating a new email address called "legaldepartment@panovation.com" and sent me another email from there with an obviously fake lawyer's name attached to the email. It became obvious at this point that Mark was a dickhead with no sense of humor so I decided to report the legal threats to my web host to let them know what to expect in case Mark tried to threaten them next. Although my webhost had originally told me "we won't shut your site down unless we get a count injunction or the FBI shows up at our office" when I first signed up with them, during Mark's little escapade they were having some customer service issues due to their data center being in the area that was recently hit by Hurricane Katrina. They were less than helpful (although for understandable reasons) so I moved onto the next step.
That next step was to find out who I was dealing with. Can't fight an enemy you don't know after all. I hired a private investigation company I had used in the past to run a background check on Mark Grieg using the WHOIS information he was asking me to remove from my website. I figured in the worst case scenario I would spend a small sum of money to have much more ammunition to use to mock him on my site. That was almost exactly what happened. They tried to do the background check but charged me no money because they could not locate Mark. They confirmed that the address he posted in his WHOIS information was totally fake, did not exist and never had existed. They searched for anyone named Mark Grieg located in the same state as the fake address and found nobody by that name. They searched for any registered company or trademark named "Panovation" and once again found nothing. They told me in no uncertain terms that Mark was either using a fake identity or going to great efforts not to leave any paper trail of his existence.
I updated the section of my site discussing Mark's hoax and the legal threats he sent me to say that the information he was threatening me to get taken down was FAKE in the first place and this made his whole story seem even more shady than it was in the frist place. I challenged Mark that if he really wanted to try to take legal action aginst me for posting so-called "personal information" that didn't even belong to him in the first place then he was more than welcome to try. Not suprisingly, Mark has not made any attempt to contact me again after my discovery of his lie.
Some Things for You to Think About
Anyone who has read this page up to this point probably already has an idea of what kind of guy Mark really is but I know a lot of you Sega fanboys can be slow on the uptake when it comes to this sort of thing so I'm going to give you a few things to think about to help you along.
First off, Mike was born in 1985 according to his website. That means in 2005 when he pulled his Sonic ORPG hoax he would have been only 20 years old. Not old enough to have completed college so he clearly had no education. Not even old enough to drink. Knowing that, what do you think the chances are that he was the "chairman" of a company of ANY kind, much less the "chairman" of a major company with multiple employees that makes major online games for Sega? The correct anwser to that question: No fucking chance in hell. This means Mark Grieg is a liar.
The next question to ask yourself is if you buy into any of Mark's possible excuses for his Sonic ORPG hoax. We already know he is a liar and we already know that "Panovation Studios" is not a real company and had no other employees besdies Mark. Knowing that he had no other employees besides himself, what do you think the chances are that an "insider" could possibly have been responsible for the hoax? Who the hell else would have been inside his fake company besides himself? And knowing he is a liar, why should we believe him if he blames it on a hacker? I'm pretty sure you can figure out the anwsers to those questions on your own.
Of course, we already knew he was a liar because he used a fake identity to register his domain name then pretended to be a lawyer as an excuse to quote laws that don't exist as part of an asinine attempt to get me to remove his "personal information" from my website that wasn't even his or real in the first place.
Now, Mark has continued to pull pretty much the same shit for the last few years, putting half-finished "beta" websites on the internet to rant and rave about how great he is and how he has all these "business" ventures going on. And just like with his previous hoax, anyone who looks at the facts close enough would be able to see through Mark's smoke screen of lies and identify that Mark is just a kid with no life, no skills and no talent.
Speaking of Mark's lack of skills and talent, lets take a look at his current resume shall we? Here is the funny and ironic part about this. This document once again contains his "personal information" such as address and phone number that he threatened me to get off my website years ago. The funny part is that ITS BACK and he once again can't do anything about it. The Ironic part is that he himself is once again responisble for this information being available because he himself posted it online. I'm just reposting it on my website, just like I did with the WHOIS info.
The first thing you can tell is he has no real education of any kind. He has a high school degree (from Canada of all places) which he claims makes him trilingual in multiple languages including Japanese. He also claims that is where he learned pretty much everything there is to know about computers and video game development. Unless the schools in Canada teach nothing but how to use a computer and Japanese, I find all of these claims highly doubtful. He goes on to list off a few jobs he had, but does not provide the dates he worked there, any contact information for these employers or any refrences (he claims the refrences can be found on his website but I looked at them and they are all blank except for one guy who wrote a letter talking about how "innovative" Mark is because of all the websites he has never finished). I tell you if any employer ever saw this "resume" he would have zero confidence in any of the information written on it. I strongly suspect that Mark's education and work history has about as much truth behind it as his WHOIS information does.
To this day I still have doubts that "Mark Grieg" even exists at all. Its entirely possible his entire identity is a complete fake. I have yet to see a single shred of evidence to the contrary. Although I have to think that if someone were going to go to such great effort to create a fake identity for themself they might choose an identity that didn't come off as such a massive braggart and a dickhead.