Dan's writeup - Very good writeup. My only complaint is that you talk about CalvinAyre's articles and don't mention that apparently Jennifer Larson worked for CalvinAyre and those articles they have written don't have many damaging facts in them (mostly bitter personal insults and pictures and speculation). I think leaving out the Ayre articles makes the story more accurate, informative and honest.
Dan's comments about the affiliates/SteveO's response - I have heard the same things from multiple affiliates. Some are in contracts, others are simply surviving on affiliate revenue from Lock and many people just flat out hope things get better with Lock and hope that the player money is there, so that they can sleep a little better at night knowing that the money they took for referring players wasn't at the expense of their entire accounts (just their bonus money that was promised to them).
But it kind of baffles me that you would say PNB and Bluff have a good affiliate relationship with Lock. Did you guys read Dan's post? You are the sites that should be covering these news stories, you're like... the poker news media right? Or are you a purely entertainment website now? Shouldn't you be a concerned affiliate of Lock's, asking them tough questions about most of what Dan writes about?
Anyways, PNB and Bluff aside, yes, I can verify myself that there are Lock affiliates unhappy with many of the Lock actions that Dan describes (not that the statement is very surprising to me given Lock's actions, any honest reputable person would be concerned about what Lock is doing, but you seemed mystified by Dan's claims).
I think you should update your In Depth Look At Lock Poker article:
http://pokernewsboy.com/poker-room-n...ock-poker/6065
There's no mention of anything in Dan's thread here, and that is obviously incredibly valuable information. You should also correct the error that says Lock Poker is the softest poker room online. That claim could never have been true, as they are a skin that shares the exact same playerbase as many other skins on the network. At best, Lock could share the softest playerbase in the world with 30-40 other skins on the Merge Network. But the truth doesn't always look as pretty/isn't as easy to sell.
Given the actions of Lock, I think we're getting to the point to where tougher questions and closer looks need to be given to player fund security. Given the actions (failures) in many more manageable situations, given that public reports indicate that Lock is processing cashouts on their own, outside of the Merge fund segregation/layer of security and given that other Merge skin owners have publicly talked about the dangers of that (even before Lock was doing it, so not just a competitor talking down to another one.. and it was the reputable Hero Poker CEO that talked about it on 2p2), also given that the regulator specifically said Lock wasn't licensed by them last year, only the Merge Network was (they didn't call out other skins, just Lock in particular), doesn't that seem like a pretty valid question to be thinking about now?
I don't understand the way some of you people act though. I certainly had a UB and AP rakeback offer up until the day they went down on my site. But when users asked what the softest site was, I told them (for the games my site represents) Carbon and Bodog were just as soft as UB/AP, and without the scandal. Users still had a choice to sign up at UB/AP, and some did, but I'm sure less signed up there after reading every answer to the question I gave over the years that included facts and links about the UB/AP scandal and subsequent coverup and really poor actions by the network. Imagine if I had told them UB and AP were really good, reputable, soft sites and they should sign up. How would I look today? What would I say to customers that entrusted me to give them accurate information from my more informed position?
So why not report some of the concerns about Lock on PokerNewsBoy? Why not get some Bluff news coverage on this? You don't have to drop them as an affiliate, but if you're going to rep them, why are there no stories about Lock's role in these scandals (particularly the casino bonuses scandal) and why do you keep a page that erroneously claims Lock is the softest poker room online up on your site? Dan Druff shouldn't have to be reporting these things and telling people about the actions of Lock, it's the poker news media's job and they seem to be largely failing (and have for the last year or so since these issues began).
Where's Jennifer's post/interview too? These aren't just a few random concerns, these are things Dan calls outright frauds, and I don't see anybody arguing that the casino bonus actions were anything less than a fraud. They dishonestly promised a bunch of extra stuff to players and hurt a lot of other businesses that delivered on what they promised. In a better market, the regulator might actually care about this, or the Merge Network. You'd think the poker news media would too. But when Merge gets a cut of Lock's rake, when the regulator gets a cut of the entire Network's rake (or fees per year based on server load, however that setup is working over there) and when the news sites are getting advertising money, I guess we can see why this story is in this thread and not on the cover of Bluff Magazine or being debated in the courts of law.