The story of the l2extreme FBI bust

Posted Feb 2, 2007 at 2:26PM EST by QJ Staff

Listed in: Titles, News Tags: California, China, FBI, NCsoft, piracy

Yeah, you all probably know already that the l2extreme Lineage 2 "service" got shut down by the feds. Well, here's the story behind it according to the Feds. Really, we got this from their official website.

In 2003, a computer user in China was able to obtain the Lineage 2 source code from an unprotected website. The code was then bought by a Texan, among others in 2004. The code was then passed on to a business partner in California, who set-up a website, www.l2extreme.com, to offer Lineage 2 at a discount.

The cheaper service gathered around 50,000 users by 2006 - which of course drained on the legitimate game's bottom line.

Despite warnings from the owners of Lineage 2, NCSoft, and despite having promised to shut down the service, the California man rented more powerful servers and solicited donations from users to help defray the costs and collected more than US$ 25,000 in less than two days.

Last November, the FBI raided the California man's home, shut down the game, seized the l2extreme domain and posted an anti-piracy warning on the site.

What's odd about this news post on the FBI's Official Website is that it has this creepy reality-TV feel to it. We say creepy because the thing uses language that reminds you of those reality law-enforcement shows. What's worse is that it just forces you to imagine William Shatner's voice reading it out to you.

Not only was the article itself reeking of reality-TV law-enforcement drama, so were the statements from the FBI personnel involved. Agent Thompson - the FBI agent responsible for the raid - actually said that several other servers running pirated games "ran for the hills."

Hear that, you evil pirate scum! Run! Run for the hills!

But yeah, the FBI will go after you if you run private servers using leaked code. So be good people, ok? If you want to check the FBI story yourself, feel free to check our read-link below.

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The story of the l2extreme FBI bust

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