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 Hacker Attracts 50,000 Subscribers to Online Game It common to go up against law enforcement in video games. Such titles as Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row prove that playing it bad can be fun. But in real life it is far from a game. That’s what one gamer learned when he attempted to run a pirated server for the popular Lineage II online role-playing game. The FBI’s Web site is reporting how a California man obtained the title’s source code, and then went on to set a server that attracted more than 50,000 subscribers. After NCsoft sends repeated warnings to shut down the site, the FBI finally moved in last November, raiding the man’s house along with other locations throughout the country, which were involved in the scheme. According to the FBI’s story, the man faces criminal copyright infringement charges, which is punishable by up to five years in Federal prison and a fine of $250,000.  It must have seemed like the perfect scheme—buy the stolen source code of a popular online game, rent some servers to run the game as your own, and then hang a shingle on the web inviting gamers to come play at a steep discount.
A California man who followed that path must have thought he’d never get caught. He was even warned once by the game’s rightful owner, a large South Korean company, to shut down. He didn’t.
(fbi.gov)References: fbi.gov, Comment: on Pirated Game Servers |
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