NCsoft Austin today said an FBI operation--which included
multiple raids from Virginia to California--has broken a
renegade service that supported about 50,000 illegal Lineage II
users. A spokesperson put the loss to the game's publisher in
the millions of dollars.
Well done, Feds! J. Edgar Hoover would be proud!
The NCsoft statement today said warrants served on the operators
at a company called L2Extreme will enable officials to "halt
L2Extreme's operations while collecting further evidence in the
course of the investigation." L2Extreme was providing its users
with "unauthorized service and code" for the massively
multiplayer online title, the company said.
"This group in particular was downloading our version of the
Lineage II software from our servers, costing us close to a
million dollars in realized bandwidth costs during the period it
was operational," Matt Esber, NCsoft North America general
counsel said. "We're extremely pleased that the FBI has worked
with us so diligently to bring this particular case to its
current state, and we want our customers to understand that we
will continue to fight similar operations in the future in order
to maintain the integrity of all NCsoft games." .
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