FBI shuts down Lineage II pirate group

Massively multiplayer game publisher NCsoft has revealed that the FBI has shut down the operations of L2Extreme - a group responsible for running unauthorised servers for the popular online title Lineage II.

FBI agents carried out a series of raids in a number of US cities, and have questioned those responsible for running the L2Extreme service, which claimed to have half a million registered users. The FBI's estimate is somewhat lower - it reckons L2Extreme had 50,000 regular players, a number which was costing NCsoft millions of dollars a year in lost revenues.

"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," commented NCsoft's North America general counsel Matt Esber, who went on to praise the FBI for their diligence in investigating the case.

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