Thread: NCsoft getting sued for 100mil

Thought you lot might enjoy this,

source http://www.pressbox.co.uk/detailed/C...ge2_70570.html

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 (1 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.

I hope he wins.

So do I, NCSoft deserve a big kick in the nuts for what they allowed L2 to become.
Pretty sure Nishi got banned for nothing as well, well apart from being friendly to chinese anyway

what a whinger. its losers like that that create stupid laws and warning labels. the only thing i dont understand is that they were still charging him. when they ban your account how could they possiblly just ignore him and keep charging him. doesnt seem right to me, and i dont think he will win.

sure ncsoft are ****s and the botting thing was bad, but we still enjoyed the game and got over it. giving a ****wit like that 100 ****ing million dollars is such an injustice its not funny.

I'd be pissed too if i was banned for no reason with no recourse, although it wouldn't destroy my life.

Now imagine if they banned your wow account with say 3 lvl 60's(all epic'd), 2 years worth of play, for no reason, with no recourse at all. Especially harder to swallow when the gamer is more hardcore and the MMORG is a big factor in their life.

The other reasons(farmers, false advertising etc) is just more fuel to burn the suing fire.

Interesting.

Wouldn't all the people (211) that signed the paper share that 100mil?

Also its probably not about the money, as apparently the place the person who started the case lives is a very rich area.

But if some of what the GM said is true then thats just terrible and i hope NCsoft loses.

if its not about the money where did 100million come from? are you telling me that emotional damages of 211 people addicted to a computer game that got banned and overcharged equates to $100million?

that would be like being a crack addict, constantly complaning to his dealer that he didn't like the other people buying, or he keeps getting bad drugs, so one day the dealer doesnt sell anymore and then the user sues him for damages? i know it's kind of extreme, but thats what it looks like to me.

like i said, the charging stuff AFTER banned accounts is weird, but i wonder if any of these people have botted? of course they would say they haven't...but take someone who has and gotten banned for botting, would NCSoft give an answer? would the botter even ask?

and i know for a fact that i would not get banned for no reason, for things like this, i bet these guys are just hoping that ncsoft dont have evidence of them breaking the agreement. these companies are way to big and deal with way too much money to let something like this happen, they were banned for a reason and not told for a reason. what that is who knows.

Useless suings moving into the gaming industry... scary.

I assume the figure quoted is just a beginning place for the haggling. They always start with some idiotically huge amount and then work it out from there. But then I've seen some pretty insane figures on American cases before too. Maybe the guy just thought it would be cool at parties to be able to say 'hey I'm suing a company for 100 million dollars, neat huh?'.