The attorney also claims throughout the letter that The Escapist piece was instigated by developer Derek Smart. Smart has been on a campaign against CIG and Star Citizen that ramped up after his pledge was refunded and forum access was revoked. Freyermuth accuses The Escapist of being duped by a collection of sources that were shopped to a number of websites, pointing to Glass Door reviews that emerged in the wake of the site's first in-depth story about Star Citizen.

"Whole passages of the Article, which the Author also repeated in the Podcast, were lifted from anonymous 'reviews' posted on glassdoor.com, which the Author could not have verified since the site does not offer any messaging options," Freyermuth writes. "Conspicuously, those 'reviews' were posted very recently, i.e. after the Author had posted a previous article about Star Citizen and the self-appointed agitator Derek Smart, and just shortly before the [October 1] Article went online."

CIG is demanding a number of steps to be taken by The Escapist and its parent company Defy Media.

We hereby demand that you, as the responsible person in charge,
-  Personally apologize to Ms. Gardiner and our HR Manager for the tremendous emotional distress and potential repetitional harm that you have caused to them by violating the most basic journalist duties of fair and balanced reporting.
- Publish said apology on your magazine’s website, together with a retraction of the Article until such time as the murky backgrounds of its creation have been investigated.
- Engage and empower an independent party to fully investigate the events and circumstances that led to the creation and publication of this Article, including any bias of your staff and their involvement with other interested parties and any conspiring arrangements between them.