Lineage II Hackers Get Busted by the FBI

Looks like the Federal Bureau of Investigation is taking care of game industry hackers. They just managed to bring down an illegal Lineage II service which apparently registered about 50,000 accounts.

They managed to do so by numerous raids from Virginia to California, preventing further NCsoft losses. The game's publisher allegedly lost some US$ 3 million dollars until now, due to this illegal Lineage II service.

GameSpot reports that the company that provided Lineage II illegal account is called L2Extreme, and that federal investigators obtained warrants to search the company's headquarters. By searching L2Extreme, the investigators will be able to obtain further information and evidence that will provide them a strong court case.

Apparently, L2Extreme provided users with unauthorized service and code for Lineage II playtime. Ncsoft representatives also made some statements saying that L2Extreme was downloading Lineage II software from their servers, causing big bandwith costs, up to US$ one million. They are grateful that the FBI intervened in this matter and managed to stop the wrongdoers, promising that they will continue their anti-piracy campaign.

Lineage II is a bigger MMORPG than World of Warcraft, if we are to believe an April 27 NCsoft press release in which they announced that they have over 14 million subscribers worldwide.