NCsoft Steps Up Battle in the Fight Against Illegal Game Servers
Thursday 10 April, 2008
BRIGHTON,
England (10th April 2008) – NCsoft®, the world-leading, publisher of
massively multiplayer online games such as Guild Wars®, Lineage® II and
City of Heroes®, today announced that it was stepping up its fight
against the growing menace of intellectual property theft. This action
comes as a direct response to the rise of illegal online game servers
throughout Eastern Europe, particularly in Greece and Russia where
NCsoft’s fantasy-based online role playing game, Lineage II, is
extremely popular.
The fraudulent servers in question are
being used by players playing at home and in internet cafes, but such
unauthorised servers often feature – or require users to download –
illegally modified and potentially harmful game data, thereby changing
the intended online experience.
NCsoft’s European office has
identified several prominent illegal servers across Europe and is in
the process of taking action against individuals and corporations
deemed to be in breach of international copyright laws. In a lawsuit
that was commenced last year in Greece, NCsoft successfully obtained a
court order against Internet Cafe business, ‘e-GLOBAL’ following which
four of its cafes were raided and illegal software was seized. This led
to the shutting down of illegal servers on which pirate copies of
Lineage II software was loaded. Georgios Katostaris – Chairman of the
Board and Managing Director, Constantinos Zygouras – Vice-Chairman of
the Board and Managing Director, Athanassios Dobros – Deputy Managing
Director and Dimitrios Koutsoukos – Administrator of the company under
the name ‘INTERNET DYNAMICS LLC’ have all been made personal defendants
to the proceedings that are continuing in the Greek Courts in which
NCsoft is seeking damages as well as criminal remedies.
”Illegal
game servers, such as those operating from e-GLOBAL, have a hugely
negative impact on both NCsoft Europe and its customers,” commented Max
Brown, NCsoft Europe’s Sales & Operations Director. ”They seriously
affect the player’s experience of our products and rob the company of
potential revenue that is used to further enhance the player experience
on official servers. NCsoft’s loss in revenue from e-GLOBAL’s operation
is estimated in excess of six million Euros. We are defiant in our
resolve to stamp out theft of NCsoft’s intellectual properties and are
prepared to take the strongest measures to do so.”
NCsoft has
a proven track record in combating illegal servers, having worked with
the FBI in November 2006 to shut down a substantial unofficial Lineage
II server run by US-based website, L2Extreme.com. Following multiple
raids across cities throughout the US, L2Extreme’s fraudulent servers –
which claimed to support 50,000 active users – were taken offline, as
was the L2Extreme.com website.
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