The Rise and Fall of Gamepal and its conspiracy

This week we take a closer look at a well-known currency seller, Gamepal.

Gamepal used to be quite big and very much in the spotlight when they launched the character rental offer. The company grew and expanded offshore to the Philippines with more than 350 employees.

Behind the scene, a few kids in the age of early 20s ran the show. We investigated what they did right and what totally went wrong for them. Subsequently, the company had to shut down and things turned out really ugly. Management took off without paying the salaries and ex-employee took it personally sabotaging the company's reputation in the internet.

GamePal - In depth
Gamepal is a virtual currency and online game service provider found in June 2004. Even though Eric Smith the founder was at that time only nineteen years old, he already had plenty of experience in RMT business working and reselling for MySuperSales, IGE and even had his own company at fifteen years of age. The company has been inactive for a while in the late 2006, people were wondering if the company was closed or something. Today it is back in business.

Gamepal started up in Michigan and later joined by Adrian Jeff Robey who became Vice President in October 2004. The company excelled rapidly and became one of the largest virtual currency sellers during 2005 and 2006. The company enjoyed the expansion and relocate its staff to Raleigh, NC. The number of staff substantially grew from 30 to 350 when the company found GamePal International Corporation in the Philippines to supply services back to its US-based operation.

An anonymous source tipped this document about former employees filed a case against the company. The burden of holding up this large scale operation proved too much for Eric. It did not last long before he had to fled the country in April 2007 without paying for much of the company's expenses such as payroll, rent and other bills. Apparently, the company was under losses forcing the shut down of operation, employee lay off and selling off its assets to settle for outstanding expenses.

A look at Alexa traffic information of the website over three years shows a huge decline in traffic during mid 2007 when Eric Smith took off and the company ceased operation as it went into a lot of trouble.

All kinds of stories about Gamepal spread around the internet, Wowgoldfinder questioned the company's existance. Customers complain about the company's business practice and the way Gamepal handled its customers. Often, you will find comments from ex-employees who tell on their bosses and co-workers. They say bosses are a bunch of greedy kids, owing tons of money to the suppliers and evilly rip off people on purpose, the manager is a bully, the person in charge of power leveling was corrupt.

The company has received a lot of criticism from customers, eight reports have been filed to Ripoffreport, Ed Shull wrote about his bad experience with Gamepal. Suppliers do not like them either. A gamer sold his character and still got charged monthly and Gamepal threatened the seller.

Now that Eric Smith is back in the US and working for the company again only with a smaller company, he has a tough job winning back the reputation and customers to get back where he was before.