Vidjama Gmaes Work

Josh Geller goes into internet witness protection.

Josh Geller is an IP attorney for the law office of Greenberg Glusker. Greenberg Glusker is the law office that represents Horror Inc., who are in turn the studio that owns the rights to multiple horror IPs including Friday the 13th. Friday the 13th: The Game released in 2017 as an asymmetrical survival horror game.

This is what Josh Geller’s Twitter profile looks like right now;

Josh is in Twitter witness protection after he, on behalf of his law firm and client, issued a cease and desist notice to the developers of Friday the 13th: Resurrected, a fan project aimed at bringing back Friday the 13th: The Game with extra content as a free to play title. The game itself has not been for sale since the end of 2023 with servers transferred to p2p matchmaking available until at least the end of 2024.

Geller’s letter does the usual copyright stuff; threatens big money damages if the project isn’t completely scrubbed off the internet by an arbitrarily set date of a week later. It’s a common bully tactic because the law firm knows that the creators of a free mod aren’t going to have the resources to actually fight against it. And it was successful. The folks working on the Resurrected have confirmed via Twitter that the project is indeed coming to an end, directly pointing users to both Geller and Greenberg Gluske. I’m sure Geller personally couldn’t care less about Friday the 13th either the game or the movie franchise, or the fan remake for that matter. I’m also fairly confident that the project by the letter of the law probably definitely infringed on copyright/trademark and would have lost had this gone to court.

But I’m equally certain that the fans of the reboot care even less about Geller’s personal opinion, because after a long day of being roasted online Geller has locked his account to the public. Which just goes to show; if you can’t stand the heat, maybe don’t piss off a very vocal and loyal group of fans.

And the fans? Understandably not happy.