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Posted 11 March 2007 - 08:34 PM
Date Sunday, 09 July 2006 194251 CDT
Topic Lineage News - All Versions
NCSOFT CORPORATION sued for $100M in a Class Action filing related to the company’s MMORPG Lineage2 San Mateo, California June 5, 2006 ? NCSOFT North America was named in a lawsuit seeking class-action status in United States District Court for the Central District of California. The lawsuit seeks $100M in exemplary and punitive relief and contends that NCSOFT CORPORATION a South Korean Company breached its contractual obligations, engaged in false advertising, and committed credit card fraud in connection with its Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Game MMORPG Lineage 2.
The suit was brought forward by 28 year old Brian Durin, after his Lineage 2 account was terminated by NCSOFT without any justification, notification, refund, or means of recourse. The 227 page lawsuit alleges On March 12, 2006, Durin’s Lineage2 account was terminated by NCSOFT without any provision of an explanation or notification. Durin had spent over 500 hours in playing and leveling his online character in the online world of Lineage 2.
His repeated attempts to solicit an answer from the company as to the reason for his account termination was met with silence. Durin argues that NCSOFT’s actions are in violation of its own End User License Agreement EULA. Additionally, that the company violated the player-provider contract by terminating his account without providing any justification for the termination, or a method of recourse for him to pursue. He contacted NCSOFT, and PLAYNC the online billing/receivables for the company for a refund of the unused portion of his “gaming time” and was told by the company that no refund would be issued.
His credit card continued to be charged for additional months even though he could not play. Refunds for the additional charges were not refunded as well. The suit claims that NCSOFT’s action surrounding it’s credit card charging process constitutes fraud. Durin’s lawsuit further contends that he bought the game without knowing that hundreds of automated characters, referred to in the community as “bots”, were rampant throughout the online world. That these bots, referred to as a “3rd party program” within the game’s EULA, made it impossible to enjoy the game, hampered leveling a character, and was never mentioned in the companies EULA or marketing that a player would be subjected to these automated characters bots.
153 Articles of Evidence were entered with the lawsuit showing in detail that NCSOFT was fully aware that these bots were prevalent within the Lineage 2 game. Records of the Lineage2 forum site were provided showing how the company censors and deletes any topics/threads/posts related to the discussion of bots within the game’s environment. Some articles even detail how an internal NCSOFT employee used a bot, to level their own character. An affidavit of support attesting to the allegations made in the lawsuit was attached from Ki Su Lin, a former South Korean GameMaster for NCSOFT Korea. Lin claims that NCSOFT knowing allows a certain percentage of bots to exist in Lineage2 for game economics as well as the company’s own profit based agenda.
Lin states that when he started to work for the company last year, he banned every bot that was petitioned when a players sees a bot, they have the ability to petition a GameMaster online to remove the bot but was quickly told by the Head GameMaster HGM to cease with his activities. In the ensuing 9 months of his employment he was only able to terminate nine 9 accounts for botting the process of running a bot in-game.
He states that he received in excess of 2000 petitions related to botting from characters but was instructed to only investigate the petitions and not to terminate any accounts. In Lin’s affidavit, he states “NC made it clear to me that they didn’t want to ban the bots because it would mean lost revenue for them. I think that the bots make up anywhere from 30 to 40 of the community. So banning the bots would result in a 40 decrease in revenue. Everybody knew this, and accepted it.” The affidavit also states that NCSOFT engaged in deceptive practices related to preventing the proliferation of bots in Lineage 2.
Lin refers back to a memo he received, “The memo said that there was to be now public acknowledgement of the botting problem. Any public questions about bots in the game were to be answered with ‘we’re working on it.’” Lin’s account of banning players detailed, “Anytime a player started making too much noise about botting or anything like that we banned them. I thought it was unfair but that’s what we were told to do. No player was allowed to talk about bots in the forums, or name a person that was botting. When a player always petitioned us, we would call them a “pet” and sometimes we banned them because they would rally other players to petition us about bots. We really couldn’t have that.”
Durin insists he never used a 3rd party program, himself as he accessed Lineage2 exclusively at Internet Cafes that have imaged drives and don’t facilitate the use of Bots in any of the games that they host on their computers. That he never conducted himself in any type of behavior that would have resulted in an account termination. He believes his termination may be related to the dozens of petitions he sent to the online GMs everyday he played. Over eighteen 18 pages containing 211 signatures from players whose accounts have been terminated, received credit card charges, no refunds, and no explanations was entered in support of the Plaintiff’s motion seeking Class Action status.
Also attached to the suit was a Motion to Subpoena the records of NCSOFT concerning its billing policies and policies related to the conduct of its GameMasters in regards to bots and account terminations and all records evidencing 3rd party programs. The suit seeks relief by 1. $100M in damages 2. Immediate investigations/banning of 3rd party programs 3. Instituting justification / refunds / redress for players The suit was served to NCSOFT by Federal Marshals at their Los Angles location on June 2, 2006. John Crittenden of Cooley Godward LLP, NCSOFT’s Attorneys issued no comment or statement concerning the suit.
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