"For quite some time, the MAZDASPEED community has, in large part, been confrontational, disrespectful, unprofessional, vulgar or childish regarding any announcements and/or business decisions COBB Tuning has made on public forums. Responses ranging from outrage and profanity to threats of intellectual property piracy have become the normal reaction when things don't go exactly to their wishes. No amount of professionalism, realism or rationale has worked in turning these communications into more constructive discussions.

Although COBB Tuning is a business, it is made up of enthusiasts that work here and they love what they do. Everyone gets a lot of satisfaction from taking on the hard projects like cracking and controlling the MAZDASPEED ecu and making it do what no one else does. When ongoing criticism to these efforts is "**** COBB" or "I'm going to hack your software and give it away" or "**** these OTS maps" or "Hopefully Cobb will get it's head out of it's ***", it tends to make everyone less enthusiastic about working on it.

We have decided to bring MAZDASPEED development to a close because no one at COBB finds it rewarding to put in the hours and hours of effort just to have so many people spouting negativity and insults. In fact, many of our pro tuners have been monitoring the MAZDASPEED forum discussions to gauge interest and have come back with "Uh, nevermind...not worth dealing with it" responses. It's a shame that while the MAZDASPEED community is demanding more performance products from manufacturers, the tribal infighting, Lord of the Flies atmosphere and unrestrained attitude displayed on the forums is actually driving choice and new development out of the market. It might be fun for some, but the entire community suffers as a whole.

Regards,

Gary Sheehan
Director of Marketing
COBB Tuning"