FBI Seizes Illegal Lineage II Service Provider News

NCsoft's North American operation has today confirmed that it's been working with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to shut down 'L2Extreme', which provided its users with unauthorised service to the publisher's MMO, Lineage II.

Costing NCsoft millions of dollars annually, L2Extreme boasted on its now seized website that it served up to half a million users, though the FBI puts the figure closer to fifty thousand.

"Operations like this essentially are defrauding customers by stealing from companies like NCsoft," said Matt Esber, NCsoft North America general counsel. "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. 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.

"We've taken this action because we strongly believe in defending the intellectual property rights that we've worked so hard to create. 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."

Interviews and raids took place across the United States from California through to Virginia; the Federal investigation is currently ongoing.

We'll have more news shortly...