This article is the subject of a legal complaint from Evony LLC.

After publication of this article, a representative of Evony LLC contacted us. He said neither the company nor its owners were associated with internet fraud or scams. He said Evony denied any suggestion that it had "ripped off" predecessor games and said a considerable amount had been invested in research and development to produce a unique game. Evony said it did not charge players for sending a message to other players and was not responsible for nor did it encourage the use of spam messages referring to Evony.

Quite possibly. If you've been anywhere near the internet in recent weeks, you may well have noticed the vast number of promotions for a game called Evony – campaigns on websites featuring buxom fantasy queens; countless Google ads and (more disturbingly) millions of spam comments left on blogs.

On the surface, Evony is a pretty standard online strategy game – a simulation in which players take the role of a medieval noble who must build up an empire. But the way the game has been marketed has created a bit of a stir: the games marketer Bruce Everiss has charted the volume of spam being sent by its creators, while Jeff Atwood, a US programmer and blogger, has documented the ads' increasingly racy nature – from a simple medieval warrior promising the game would be "free forever", through a string of increasingly racy images ... until, finally, it was simply advertising itself by showing a pair of breasts.

"Thanks for showing us what it means to take advertising on the internet to the absolute rock bottom ... then dig a sub-basement under that, and keep on digging until you reach the white-hot molten core of the Earth," he wrote last week.

It's not just the advertising that has got the internet up in arms, however – the game itself has drawn criticism from many quarters. Evony takes its inspiration from Civilization, the classic Sid Meier series. In fact, its slavish devotion stretches not only to its original name – it was known as Civony until recently – but also to the details of the game itself; a format so familiar that more than a few gamers to question whether Evony has simply ripped off its predecessors.

And as if bad advertising and tenuous intellectual property were not enough, the game is also under fire for its business model – a system that seems intent on getting players to spend as much money as possible. Players are encouraged to buy in-game extras to speed their progress – but the confusing way the game prices its add-ons means that many users may not realise that a simple action, such as sending a message to another player, can cost 15p a time.

All of this has swirled into a storm of criticism around Evony – except on the game's own web forums, where mentions of its most controversial practices are deleted by moderators. So if Evony is the world's most despised game, who is behind it?

It turns out that the site's backers are equally unpopular. Evony is the product of Universal Multiplayer Game Entertainment (UMGE), a developer linked to a Chinese gold-farming operation called WoWMine. That site has also come in for regular criticism, but the real kicker comes with the news that the company's owners are being sued by Microsoft over allegations of click fraud.

Perhaps Evony isn't the most hated game on the internet: but it certainly runs close.