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FBI busts Lineage II hackers

By Staff, GameSpotPosted Nov 20, 2006 4:49 pm PT

L2Extreme allegedly ran the NCsoft game on rogue servers; 50K "illegals" booted from game's universe.

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."

137 Comments

  • Gamewize

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 6:01 am PT

    Always good to see such incredible resistance of authority on Gamespot. If you get big enough and you start losing the company money AND it's illegal to boot, the company will kick your ass. Simple as that. Get over it, it's gone, it's a testament to why you don't do it. Other people pay good money to play it and so should you, you don't like it? Don't play it.

  • Geowil

    Posted Apr 4, 2007 11:14 pm PT

    I apologize in advance to anyone who reads this who gets offended, i strictly really could care less.


    you know, these korean game companies (and maybe some world wide companies) are stupid as hell.

    NcSoft, Gravity, Maeit, insert random gaming company here all **** and complain about private srevers but look at theirs, full of hackers and botters that pay them every month, so they dont do jack. If you as me, we shuold have even more private servers, maybe then they would say, "wait a second, why are all of our players going to private servers *chesck their servers* holy hell, look at all these hackers and botters on our servers".

    the only way to get through to these kinda companies is to make them loose large amounts of money so they can take their heads out of their asses and see why everyone hates the official servers either that or the get to Gravity's point and stop caring all together.

    All in all, mho is that private servers for games that have sucksville ogiginal servers is illigal but really, would you pay 10 or 30 bucks a month to play on a server with hackers? no, you wold go to a private server before that, or not play at all and go to another game to find that they also have a hacking problem.

    If these gaming companies what to make any money at all, they need to stop bashing on P. servers and go after the hack sites. then once they are all gone and fined or sent to jail or shut down or what ever they can do what they want to the private servers, but until then they should just st*u.

  • Viper11023

    Posted Mar 4, 2007 10:05 am PT

    OMG.This is only a small drop in a really big bucket.Too all LX players out there. Good Luck, and thank you all.

  • soldado_nazi

    Posted Dec 12, 2006 9:42 pm PT

    Hmmm... They get the "small time" and leave the bug league crooks on the loose. The sad thing is that microsoft creates on porpose bugged windows, bugged softwares and launch new (more bugged) software making the last one we bought incompatible and law doesnt really care (yep, new software doesnt the same crap, only has renewed looks, eats more ram and you get a reminder about the firewall not beeing active). Even pcs now are full of problems when back in time of those pentium II or III there wouldnt be no blue screens, incompatible hardware etc etc.. bunch of crap that limits pc using (I wish apple could compete more for the monopoly = comptetition means BETTER services but they have it all). I bought a laptop and i believe that with some time problems will start to show up (like over heat, blue screens or the usual "we're sorry for the inconvinience but the aplication had to be closed. Press F1 for our stupid help that solves nothing")... its the "wheel of fortune", some may not have, others may have. 2 in 2 years buy new hardware, get the latest update (like in guild wars, they release a new expansion every hour) and NOW they come up with L2 pursuit???

    Come on, most of those 50000 PLAYERS wouldnt go to the official to pay a lot and to level up at 1x rates ("costing us close to a million dollars")... level 20 in half year playing 7h a day? With 58 levels to go to reach top? LOL... for what, to get "adena" for that stupid armor to show my palls from clan? Thats what its all about, showing off in this game (about the nice graphics). I simply wont pay to pay online and I usually played L2 in private servers and with L2 extreme off, I STILL wont pay for it lol!

  • ciprianul

    Posted Dec 7, 2006 4:46 am PT

    some ppl don`t have money to pay NC soft 15-20$ a month to play on a server that`s 1x and FULL OF BOTS and Hackers. To get to level 50 or 60 (when the game is fun) it takes too long.
    Why doesn`t NC Soft clean up their servers first (at least 50.000 L2Walker and L2Superman users) then start closing other servers.
    I`m not saying that what L2Extreme did is legal but NC Soft was the one who "released" the server files back on C1. I said "released" not in the way "Click Here to download server files" it`s more like:
    - "Look man they hacked us and stole our server files! OMG WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO?!?"
    - NCSoft Director: "oh! let them have the files maybe some1 will hear about this lame game (6 on gamespot and 5 or under 5 on other MMORPG sites) and they will start playing on retail to."
    I saw an article on a magazine once (romanian magazine) in which an important person from Valve admited that a big part of the CS success was because of all the cracked versions (then they made Steam and it was harder to crack it so ppl bought the game because it`s worth every $. I won`t pay 15-20$ to play a game where it takes to long to reach a higher level and on servers that are full of Bots and exploiters/hackers that sell items on Ebay.

    Most of u live in US/UK but i live in Romania, a country which has 83 or 84% piracy so when a game comes out i must REALY REALY REALY LOVE that game to buy it!
    Microsoft was realy happy when the piracy in Romania, Russia, Bulgaria droped with 2%.
    P.S: Sorry for my bad english

  • Death_Dragoon

    Posted Nov 28, 2006 5:39 pm PT

    Waste of money. The hackers, at most, will get community service and fined $1000. Why would liniege do this, about 10 percent of the fined money will go to them, what a waste of time and money.

  • Talgrath

    Posted Nov 27, 2006 1:01 am PT

    Hacking is hacking, and the losses (if accurate) are pretty major; I doubt it took the FBI much time to track these clowns down either. In all seriousness, good on the FBI; at least the FBI is starting to catch up with the digital age.

  • xeophaje

    Posted Nov 25, 2006 5:46 pm PT

    My question is how much tax money does NCSoft provide to warrant it being worthwhile to the American people to let the F.B.I be used in such an operation? Yes I am aware that NCSoft has an American office but that doesn't make me automatically think they are paying huge taxes into the coffers when they are primarily a Korean company.

  • tntxot

    Posted Nov 23, 2006 4:40 am PT

    neojam, maybe FBI is short on hackers and decoders.

  • neojam

    Posted Nov 23, 2006 2:57 am PT

    Way to go FBI ! lol x_X

    Dont they have more importang things to do, then this?

  • emmm78

    Posted Nov 22, 2006 11:11 pm PT

    Higher rates= fun= private servers.
    For people flamin L2: L2 doesn`t have chubby square WoW graphics and is not as dull, boring and uninspired as Guildwars.:p

  • tntxot

    Posted Nov 22, 2006 12:05 pm PT

    This Same thing happened to Valve. there were thousands of illegal servers, then so called "Non-Steam". Now almost everyone has the original game (hl &/or HL2) and plays legit. why? the game is worth every $ or €, they provide the software to make Servers to those who own the a legal account. thats why HL2 is one of the best games out in the market.. and thats why this game (l2) is dying from diabetes.

  • tntxot

    Posted Nov 22, 2006 11:52 am PT

    "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," what did they want? leave a car open with a key in the ignition, only the fools wont take it for a ride. is it illegal? yes! but if the car was secure it wont be so easy to steal! they dont secure their software and then they complain that they loss millions... kinda sad.. isnt it? phalluman i know that, but if many people say that they will start the 3rd ww.. they r crazy

  • Autolycus

    Posted Nov 22, 2006 8:35 am PT

    i'd like my tax dollars back to stop something useful like corporate corruption please.

  • Reetesh

    Posted Nov 22, 2006 8:29 am PT

    OMG! Even the FBI is after Game hackers! Thats Crazy!

  • phalluman

    Posted Nov 22, 2006 7:15 am PT

    tntxot, those 'coreans' are crazy

    i dont know if they should be punished for other people downloading the game.
    that seems kind of crazy.

  • CyberKillerZ

    Posted Nov 22, 2006 6:14 am PT

    lOloLOlOLoLOlOl that was funny xD

  • tntxot

    Posted Nov 22, 2006 1:10 am PT

    as i said, that game doesn't worth the money people pay... in top of that, i saw some day while browsing on the web that their servers are like rates xp 1x, i dunno if its true, but if it is, its just the proof that they only want $ and more $...Online role play games have a short life time.. take a look to other titles that no one hears now.. and some of those old school mmorp were free, they think this will survive because its pay? Must be some kind of corean atitude, maybe... maybe not

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