The FBI conducted multiple raids across the country today, closing down Lineage II pirating site L2Extreme, NCsoft said.

L2E was providing an estimated 50,000 gamers with unauthorized access to Lineage II, costing NCsoft million of dollars a year, the company said in a press release.

"Operations like this essentially are defrauding customers by stealing from companies like NCsoft," said Matt Esber, NCsoft North America general counsel. "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.

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

THe investigation into L2Extreme is ongoing in various cities from California to Virginia Brian Crecente

L2Extreme

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