FBI Shuts Down Illegal Servers for NCsoft's Online Game "Lineage II"

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on November 20, 2006 - 5:53pm.

Austin, Texas - Following multiple raids in cities from California to Virginia, the FBI has shut down an illegal online game server operation for Korean developer NCsoft's "Lineage II" massively multiplayer online game.

The FBI estimated that L2Extreme had up to 50,000 active users on its service, which NCsoft estimated equated to losses of millions of dollars per year.

"We've taken this action because we strongly believe in defending the intellectual property rights that we've worked so hard to create," said NCsoft North America general counsel Matt Esber. "Operations like this essentially are defrauding customers by stealing from companies like NCsoft. In the end those losses impact our customer support, product development, operational areas and ultimately they impact our player communities, most of which are trying to play games legitimately." NCsoft said that the investigation into the L2Extreme operation is ongoing.

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/y992sn
http://tinyurl.com/wefrg (Austin American-Statesman)
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=14506
http://www.ncsoft.com
http://www.l2extreme.com