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Lineage 2: FBI Shuts Down Lineage II Private Server
GFulls
Member Posts: 478
The Federal Bureau of Investigation reports on the recent shutdown of a Lineage II private server.
It must have seemed like the perfect scheme--buy the stolen source code of a popular online game, rent some servers to run the game as your own, and then hang a shingle on the web inviting gamers to come play at a steep discount.
A California man who followed that path must have thought he'd never get caught. He was even warned once by the game's rightful owner, a large South Korean company, to shut down. He didn't.
"They don't think that a company is going to come after them at any point," says Christopher Thompson, a special agent on a cyber squad in the FBI's office in Austin, Texas. "He said he was going to stop doing it and he didn't."
So the company, which has offices in Austin, called the FBI. The suspect was apparently lining his own pockets from "donations" and ads on his site while his pirated version of the game, "Lineage II," was siphoning $750,000 a month in potential revenues from the company.
According to Agent Thompson, here's how the scheme evolved:
In 2003, a computer user in China obtained the "Lineage" source code from an unprotected website. The proprietary code was then placed on the underground market, where a Texas man, among others, bought it in 2004. He then passed it along to his business partner in California, who set up a website, www.l2extreme.com, to offer the "Lineage" game at a discount. Gamers arrived in droves--as many as 50,000 active users by 2006--which pinched the legitimate game's bottom line.
"It's comparable to the music-downloading and file-sharing problem in the late '90s--thousands of people engaging in activity that is inherently illegal," Agent Thompson said.
The California man soon assumed full control of the site and ramped up operations. In late 2005, just months after promising to shut down the site, he rented more powerful servers--enough to accommodate 4,000 simultaneous gamers. He solicited donations from users to help defray the costs and collected more than $25,000 in less than two days.
"Even if game sites collect no money, they still operate in violation of copyright laws," Agent Thompson said. "But he just got greedy because the money was there." Indeed, online gaming is estimated to be a $1 billion industry and growing. And massive, multi-player online games (MMOGs in the gamers' parlance) are one of the leading categories.
Last November, Agent Thompson led a raid on the California man's home, shut down the game, seized the l2extreme domain, and posted the FBI anti-piracy warning on the site. Meanwhile, the company posted a press release on its website announcing the raid. "We've taken this action because we strongly believe in defending the intellectual property rights that we've worked so hard to create," the company said in the release.
The result: several other servers running pirated games "ran for the hills," Agent Thompson said. There are others, to be sure, but the case serves as a reminder that stealing intellectual property is a criminal offense. As our warning clearly states, " Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000."
Read more here.
Read more about Lineage II here.
Comments
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I hope they dont all move to china though..
And the players who spent 9999 hour lvling their characters crying becouse of the servers being shut down.
Can't say I feel sorry for them.
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Killer 86%, Socializer 53%, Explorer 33%, Achiever 26%
I'd love to hear from some people that played on his servers and hear what they have to say.
I am:
Aserhe - Twi'lek - Scylla Galaxy (swg) [canceled]
Exar - Dark Elf - Lucan D'lere (eq2) [canceled]
Narlash - Night Elf - Emerald Dream (wow) [Active]
The $750k comes from him having 50,000 users. If L2 had those users they would be making $15 x 50,000 = $750,000 a month, so in essense they are being robbed of that much money per month. I can't see this guy having in excess of $10,000-$20,000 a year from donations.
I think it is cool, but at the same time, if he isn't making tons of money that he could be making, what is the big deal? Yeah he took some old code from the beginning of the century, but he modified it past the original product. He should have called it something different, but still, if folks are flocking to it, they are doing so for a reason.
This mean the SWGEMU is out? Or is that special circumstance since it will be in another country? I havne't heard of it in a while.
But, these guys did make it easy to login to their servers, quick updates, fast levelling...
But, I also know real servers work so much better (example is WoW on private servers SUCKS big time), while the REAL game is way better..
Lesson here? You get what you pay for...
(But notice my Sig!. I would prefer to play Guild Wars and NO monthly fee. So Hosting Companies...TAKE NOTE...hehe)
(Note: All statements used here may not be used against me in a court of law)
I played on L2extreme a while back. I liked it because they had no botter problem that affected me (money was so easy to come by anyway) and it was easy to get into PvP and level up. The exp. rate was around 50x original when I quit. Instead of grinding endlessly for months on end to get to mid level, I could play 3 days a week and hit 60 or so in a month. It was fun, it was quick, it didn't have useless developers; in short, it was fun.
Now it's true that what they did, and what I did, was illegal. Trying to prove that they stole $750,000 a year is impossible though. As was stated earlier, I'd NEVER play L2 on the real servers. But, they took the chance and we'll see how it works out.
Anyway, I'm done ranting and no, I never played lineage nor going to.
I'd love to hear from some people that played on his servers and hear what they have to say.
You're not very bright, are you?
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"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb." -- Batman
Again, the $750,000 they stole was per MONTH. Not per year. Guess some folks don't understand how much these guys are making.
If a game had a subscription fee of $10 a month, and had 100,000 users. They would be bringing 1 million dollars a month. That is 12 million dollars a year.
WoW claims to have a million users (or was it 10million? ) anyways, $15 a month for 1,000,000 is $15 million dollars a month. That is 180 million dollars a year. I cant even count that high.
Lineage II was crying because this guy was "stealing" not $750,000 from them, but in 2006 they were "stealing" 9 million dollars for the year. That is a lot of money.
Now the guy says he got 20 grand in a couple of days.. ok, but that would have been for the next few months,,, he wouldn't have gotten a whole lot of revenue from the game. 20 grand would be right about what you would need to purchase and run your own server, since that is what you would have to do since doing what he was doing was in the gray, well now illegal I suppose. I guess we will see when NCSoft gives them a settlement out of court.
Personally I hope this thing goes to trial. While I love MMOs... I think the little guys might be able to make a product even better. Look at SWG, you cannot get any worse with that game.
Am i missing something? or did someone hack a korean company instead of the other way around?
Anyway, there are large chunks of information missing in this article including, "he said he would shut down the server then continued". Uhhh so who gave him a warning? FBI? CIA? koreans? Seaseme street? peter griffin PI?
Regardless of how many people "might" have bought a particular game or CD vs downloading it, the intellectual property owner has every right to restrict access to people who pay them for it. If you don't pay, you should not play.....
but I digress....
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Warp
Running any sort of emulator for an MMORPG (other than a legitimate one that the company who owns it gave you permission for) is illegal. People who are doing these actions are criminals. They are thieves - stealing the hard work of others. Whether they give that away for free or not is irrelevant - if I hold up a bank, and then give the money away to everyone I meet as I run down the street, I am STILL guilty, and will STILL be prosecuted.
Interesting sidenote: the $750k a month was estimated damages. The courts will not care how many of those players would or would not have paid to play the real L2. They will take the number of total players, multiply by the $$ fee the game has per month, and mutiply that by the number of months the thief's game was active.
Then, there might be some mitigating circumstances which reduce that figure: but that's the damages NCSoft can legally claim. That's the damages ANY mmorpg company can claim against ANY emulator, at ANY time - even if they have never said a word about it before.
Emu runners, beware. That next knock on YOUR door might be the FBI.
Owyn
Commander, Defenders of Order
http://www.defendersoforder.com
First you need some good lawyers, ones who can see your point of view but also win in the court room. As others have posted, the gaming companies wont take you to court. To many Risk's. Granted NCSoft will try and sue this person, but it will never see the inside of a court room.
As to other EMU makers. SWGEMU: I can see smed trtying to pull somehting as or before it launches. He is afraid of what will happen when i predict Thousands of players will Flock to swgemu. The SWG emu team has been doing a great job of 100% reverse engineering the game. Thats right, no code was stolen they reversed engineered the game. This is no simple task and since the code wasnt stolen it should be fine. A few ex SOE folks have a bet going, SWGEMU will hit 500k subscriptions (100% free) and some of the imbalances have been fixed, and they figured out a way to catch people hacking in the game.
Truthfully who's property is it? is it the person who payed for the account, the months upon months of subscription fees to only have the game changed on a whim and they lose that investment of time and money? When the gaming company customer service skills rank around 0? When customer service surveys are considered c**k sucking. When the gaming company decides you arent its target audience anymore and tells you to screw off? Then they don't even give you a refund on your subscription you already paid for in advance?(can we say ILLEGAL?)
I strongly doubt EMU is in any real trouble. For the haters and fanboi's out there, what ever.....
Until gaming companies decide that they should listen to their customers and actually communicate with them, emulators will always be around.
If you are a lawyer who specializes in copyright law then I might be inclined to listen. I don't think you are a lawyer though. And what of the Art Design. That is intellectual property.
So... if I write a book, and someone decides they don't like the ending, they have the right to rewrite the ending and post the book on the internet for no money or donations? If I paint a painting and someone decides that they want to change some of the colors and post it for download on the internet then I don't have any rights?
Somehow I don't think so. Thank goodness we have laws.
Granted, it seems that many game companies lose their way or make odd choices with these games. But they paid for the art, the design, they used their resources. They have people sign their end user agreements. People click "ok" whether they read them or not.
If you don't like the game, the book, the painting (graphic) you don't have to make use of it. I don't see where people have the right to change it to their liking and then allow others to use their changes.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
If l2extreme hadn't had their customers pay for it.. nothing would have happened:
1. Without any fees the game would have been horrible
Meaning, it wouldn't have been as massive because the servers would have sucked. The bigger something illegal is... the easier it is too get caught.
2. They wouldn't have been earning anything, which makes a heck of a difference
Even the Agent agrees with me... sort of
"Even if game sites collect no money, they still operate in violation of copyright laws," Agent Thompson said. "But he just got greedy because the money was there."
He got greedy, and that is why the FBI got involved.
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I agree with the what they did.
But I hope they don't start shutting down the free EMU's. Because they suck (yeah I tried a few a year back).
It's basically free advertising for the game.
It also helps people get good game programming skillz
I'd say the free EMU's aren't a good thing or a bad thing.
So the root is, if the EULA forbids users connecting to unofficial servers, then any action to reverse engineer the server to allow players to violate this clause IS illegal; anyone who runs such a server is liable for damages from potential lost income.
Yes, all those EQ, UO, L2, etc. servers out there are 100% completely against the law. Yes, their owners can be sued for damages that in many cases are in the millions of dollars.
It doesn't happen often - Blizzard is the only company *actively* shutting down every emu they find out about, far as I know. But every time something like this happens, it adds to the body of precedent, and makes it more likely we'll see more such activity later.
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For those who think emus are OK, because 'most of those people would not have payed to play anyway', consider this:
A game with 50k players is stealing a potential max of $9,000,000 - that's nine million dollars - a year in revenue.
Suppose only 1% of those players would pay to play.
How would YOU feel if someone stole $900,000 from your business?
Owyn
Commander, Defenders of Order
http://www.defendersoforder.com
I dont see anything wrong with the bust. , its another thing if he even gets convicted all depends.
-Semper ubi sub ubi!
always wear underwear
Congratulations to the FBI, you just made thousands of people bored.
I have no problem with people doing copyright infringement, and I have no problem with people getting busted for it, its just a twisted version of the cycle of life. Seriously though, NCSoft has to stop making illegitimate claims, especially about their loss of money. If anyone on this thread ever looked at the comments section for L2, over 70% of them hate the game and used the big bold words "GRIND", basically, L2X made L2 better, congratz NC, you suck at sucking, because L2 just plain sucks and you can't even do that right!
*EDIT*
OH! And by the way, if you reverse engineer a game, I don't think theres anything they can do, why? Simply because in essence, their writing from scratch, however, they have a template to look at. So the courts could go either way on that.
I hope you all know how wrong you can be about the courts sometimes, after all look at the mafia trial with Jackie DiNorscio, every one of them mobsters got off clean, and the jury KNEW they were mobsters. Anyway you closed minded people annoy me, I actually read every post, half of em made me want to throw my monitor, the other half I agreed with...
*EDIT*
I knew the taxes I paid were good for something.