NCSoft released a press release today saying the FBI has successfully closed down a computer game operation that provided an illegal service to players of Lineage II. Across various cities in the U.S., the owners of L2Extreme were hit hard after providing unauthorized service and code for players on Lineage II. According to the press release, L2Extreme had up to 50,000 active users on its service and NCSoft estimated that the losses and damages cost them millions of dollars per year.
Matt Esber, NCSoft North America General Counsel, said "Operations like this essentially are defrauding customers by stealing from companies like NCsoft. 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."
