I completely disagree, on the exact point Marc made in his post. Fundamentally, the OP is trying to make his site look as if it is run by play united, where in fact he is an affiliate of theirs. Go look at his sites compared to their .com – even I’m hard pressed to find a difference and I’m looking for it. The courts will judge their decisions primarily on intentions, and in this case the domain owners’ intent is to act like play united. He’s even using popups that link to playunited.com!
Look, if he owns the domains and uses them to host a website about writing poetry, play united’s case for trademark infringement would probably not go very far. If he owned the domain and didn’t do anything, he’d probably be able to get a pretty good value out of it and not be liable for trademark infringement.
Fundamentally, they want those domains (and shame on them for not grabbing them when they had the chance) because what if the OP decided to promote another program? He has the capability of doing significant harm to play united’s brand name simply because the domain is obviously being used & promoted as a gaming website. By completely eliminating that relationship, either by totally changing the content or removing the sites entirely, he gains himself far more legal ground to stand on.
They entered their low offer. I’d suggest you counter with a high counter-offer, and eventually you’ll likely meet in the middle. They don’t want to go to court any more than you do.
Dave