We noted recently on W.A.S.’s website that owner Jim Drew has put the entire company for sale.  I went ahead and dropped him a line to ask why he was doing this, and why if he wasn’t able to sell the company that he’d release the source code and schematics for his board designs.

Below is Mr. Drew’s answer in it’s entirety:

Well, I have about $60,000 worth of inventory, including SMT stencils,
PC boards, and components to produce just about every board that WAS has
ever sold.  This also includes several products that were produced but
never released, like the Halo board, VLocity board, and Enforcer.  It
would be nice to recoup some of the money invested.  This would give
someone an opportunity to start producing products that are still faster
than what is available today, and completely legal without cheat modes.
Once they had the source code, they could add whatever they wanted.
It is still sad to me that people lost sight of the meaning of the game.
I guess I am somewhat to blame for the rate of fire wars, and I did
invent the “Debounce” setting, but I always produced 100% legal boards.

Players – the reality is that boards now cost about $7 each for
production quantities of 100 pieces (less for higher quantities), and
that is made in the U.S.A. not China!  I wanted to charge no more than
$49 for our boards, but Gino from National Paintball insisted that the
boards needed to retail for no less than $129… this set the standard
in the industry, one that still exists really.

When a DM4 chip costs $1 and takes 17 seconds to program, is it suddenly
worth $50+ more?  Same with the hopper chips… they are less than a $1.
Granted there is R&D time, but let’s be honest here.  I wrote the code
for our Halo board and fully tested it in an afternoon.  This is really
not that big of a deal and once you write the code for one board, it is
just a matter of reshaping the board and perhaps making a few changes to
the code to accommodate different switches or LEDs.  It is so easy and
quick to make these changes that they can be done in a few minutes from
a Wifi Hotspot inside McDonalds and sent for production.  I actually did
this once.

I would like to see an end to players getting ripped off by the
manufacturers.  With my technology anyone could be a board manufacturer.
Anyone could also produce a royalty-free marker with the concepts that
I have to make a fully electronic marker that does not violate any of
the patents.  I really don’t care which way it goes, I am just fed up
with an industry of crooks who are far more concerned about making money
than they are with the safety of the players.

You are welcome to put this on record.

If I can’t recoup the money, it’s not that big of a deal and I will just
toss the inventory into the trash.  If this happens I can tell you that
there will be a dozen new board manufacturers making inexpensive boards
and markers!

If someone is interested in purchasing everything, contact me directly

at jimdrew@frontiernet.net