3 Private Servers forced to closed under Action Against Private Servers in Thailand

Asiasoft Nabs Illegal Online Game Service Providers and Seizes Servers

- The operation was an unprecedented success and marks the first salvo of ‘Action against Private Servers’ initiative in the gaming community -




From Asiasoft Nabs Illegal Game Service Providers

2nd February 2009, Bangkok, Thailand - In cooperation with Thailand’s authorities; The Economic and Cyber Crime Division, High Tech Crime Center, Asiasoft Corporation Public Company Limited, (SET: AS) is pleased to announce the arrest of three notorious and unlicensed online game service providers and their servers on January 24th, 2009. The successful operation marks the start of the ‘Action Against Private Servers’ initiative by Asiasoft to educate the gaming community.


The trio jointly declared the successful shut down of those illegally operating servers that violated Thailand’s Intellectual Property Laws, dishonestly duplicating and making a profit from the company’s multi-million baht gaming merchandises, namely Ragnarok Online, Yulgang and Dekaron. In a swift and timely operation, the officials raided three different locations in Bangkok all at the same time. A total of five suspects were arrested and eight servers were seized as evidence.


“Violating the Intellectual Property Law has a serious impact on Thailand’s economy. Not only does it affect the gaming industry, it dampens the country’s economic growth as tremendous resources are lost, discouraging foreign countries to invest in Thailand,” warned Mr. Alongkorn, Deputy Minister of Commerce. “This is an urgent issue that needs to be taken care of. It is our duty to help companies to eliminate the illegal business means, thereby showing our sincere support to the business sectors.”


The pirate server gangs who had illegally duplicated the popular online games have been charged under the “piracy for profit” law and found guilty of running unlicensed online game servers (Ragnarok Online, Yulgang and Dekaron online games are licensed merchandises of Asiasoft Corporation Public Company Limited, the owner of the license to operate in Thailand) by renting their 3 servers from a local Internet Data Center (IDC). This violation is a criminal conviction in Thailand and represents millions of baht loss to Asiasoft.

 Spoiler

Thai Deputy Minister of Commerce speaking to media






Illegal Servers 1






Illegal Servers 2






Thai Deputy Minister of Commerce with Asiasoft MD





Thai News Producer filming






Asiasoft and Gravity representatives

A press conference was held over the weekend with Mr. Alongkorn Ponlaboot, Deputy Minister of Commerce, Pol.Lt.Gen. Boonruang Ponpanich, Assistant Commissioner General, Royal Thai Police Bureau together with other senior police officers and Mrs. Pajchima Tanasanti Executive Vice President, Department of Intellectual Property, Thailand. Mr. Lertchai Kanpai, Managing Director of Asiasoft Cooperation Public Company Limited and Mr. Jeong Jae-hak from GRAVITY Co., Ltd (Ragnarok Online game developer from Korea) discussed the gathering of information about illegal operations of online game service providers and vowed that they would stay committed to protecting the intellectual property rights of innovators in Thailand.


“It is important for the gaming community to know about the infringement of IP copyrights issues and its high risks of running it. Not only the game play experience will not be as realistic as the official servers, the game support will not be present to make a wonderful experience,” said Mr. Lertchai Kanpai, Managing Director of Asiasoft Cooperation Public Company Limited. “With our ‘Action Against Private Servers’ initiative, we hope the gaming community will engage with us and continue to play in the official servers. We will work closely with the authorities to monitor the situation and game developers to bring richer, more quality content to enhance the total game play experience.”


This is the first piracy case to be successfully pursued by Asiasoft and the relevant authorities. With this arrest, strong endorsements and support from both private and government agencies to combat piracy were received. All parties committed to regulate the online gaming industry and continue to improve the co-operation between private and government sectors to stamp out the operations of pirate servers .




Source: http://www.playpark.net/pressroom/view/a...s_servers/

maybe next private server targeted will be MapleStory in SG/MY/Thailand?
This is in Thailand not SG/MY

I'm sorry but...

...

In before RAGE about PServers being shut downed.

-cough-

"Piracy for Profit" law + private game servers = wat

If they were actually charging for people to play their PS then they kinda deserve that.

A few quotes from the article:

"making a profit from"

Were they making profit from those pservers? That's new to me... How on earth do you do that? What retards are paying money to pservers? lolz

"it dampens the country’s economic growth as tremendous resources are lost, discouraging foreign countries to invest in Thailand"

Well, call Obama, I think we found the source of the economic crisis... :')

"The pirate server gangs"

Gangs? I bet you need lots of guns to operate a pserver... :')

“piracy for profit”

Again, how on earth are they making money with pservers? lolz... xD

"This violation is a criminal conviction in Thailand and represents millions of baht loss to Asiasoft."

Whoa they made millions with the pservers! Who are these retards who play on pservers and pay millions? :')

"Not only the game play experience will not be as realistic as the official servers, the game support will not be present to make a wonderful experience”

Like not banning hackers / not fixing bugs / no GM presence / false legit bannings / events that ruin the maple economy (free mesos glitch mSEA...) / etc...

Yeah come enjoy mSEA's wonderfull gaming experience... :')

"we hope the gaming community will engage with us and continue to play in the official servers. We will work closely with the authorities to monitor the situation and game developers to bring richer, more quality content to enhance the total game play experience.”

Yay now mSEA will have more GM's / GOOD Events / NO more hackers / etc, etc, all thanks to the authorities! Lulz... :')

Epic fail ppl @ photo btw... Especially the dude with the militairy uniform... Hahaha - RESPECT MAH AUTORETEH!!!! :')

A few quotes from the article:

Were they making profit from those pservers? That's new to me... How on earth do you do that? What retards are paying money to pservers? lolz

Donations.

Well, call Obama, I think we found the source of the economic crisis... :')

Less people in work means less interest in the country. Would you invest in Iceland? Obviously, people working with PServers wouldn't state that they earned money by doing that.

Gangs? I bet you need lots of guns to operate a pserver... :')

Again, how on earth are they making money with pservers? lolz... xD

Donations.

Whoa they made millions with the pservers! Who are these retards who play on pservers and pay millions? :')

You're overlooking the currency. Baht. Heck, even I own a million baht.

Like not banning hackers / not fixing bugs / no GM presence / false legit bannings / events that ruin the maple economy (free mesos glitch mSEA...) / etc...

Yeah come enjoy mSEA's wonderfull gaming experience... :')

Yay now mSEA will have more GM's / GOOD Events / NO more hackers / etc, etc, all thanks to the authorities! Lulz... :')

Which of the private serves existed fixed errors in the gameplay?
Which fixed the hacker problem completely?
Which actually made new areas and new content?
None.

Besides, SEA GMs actually exist, though I do admit that PServers have more GMs, but chances are they misuse their power easier than GMs in SEA.

Were they making profit from those pservers? That's new to me... How on earth do you do that? What retards are paying money to pservers? lolz

Donations.

Again, how on earth are they making money with pservers? lolz... xD

Loss in profit for AS makes them assume that they're making money.

Whoa they made millions with the pservers! Who are these retards who play on pservers and pay millions? :')

Apparently a baht isn't that much. They never said the servers were making millions. They said AS was LOSING millions. Huge difference.

Which fixed the hacker problem completely?

Bearing in mind that they didn't have gameguard to do anything to the client computer (or even hash the client software, afaik), the server side anti-cheating code in odin worked pretty well at detecting hackers. There wasn't a real hacker problem on any of the servers I tried. (even if there was, with GMs who actually logged on the server every day it was easy to get response)


Of course it's easier to get GMs for a private server because they mostly work for free, maybe that's what Nexon is mad about. Time donation of work is worth something too.

-ranting-

Well, I got in before the RAGE! Predictable.

Epic fail ppl @ photo btw... Especially the dude with the militairy uniform... Hahaha - RESPECT MAH AUTORETEH!!!! :')

Cartman <3

but yea...retardation has finally hit the rest of the world. GG AsiaSoft.

Sucks for the faggots who poisoned their grinding patience with the rates of PServers. They'll be truly f'ucked when they crawl back to their official version of the game like the addicted little Maplers they are.

@Devil, are you seriously arguing that there's nothing wrong with PServers? Asiasoft/Nexon doesn't care if the servers make money or not; they're losing millions of dollars regardless.

I'm also going to take a large leap for the inb4s, and say inb4 this thread gets locked.

It looks as everyone follows the lead of EA, RIAA, and MPAA these days. ("Crush everything.")

But from every 5 you catch, another 5 will spring up.

@devil

I dont know what you're ranting about, but the general concensus is that MSEA is alot better than GMS in term of managements, contents and moderation. MSEA seems to actually do something about the bad situations. That is a huge initiative in my book, compares to GMS where they dont give a crap, yet bashing the pservers like they care about their servers.

Hey, more PSes going down.

And those of you saying that PSes don't affect the companies running MS, as many before have said they do. If someone was to spend $20 on maple one month and then doesn't because they played a PS instead, that's $20 that maple lost out on. Multiply it a few hundred times, and you're losing thousands of dollars.

Not to mention the people that go on PSes a few times for kicks and giggles, decide regular MS isn't worth it compared to PSes, and then quit the game altogether even when the PS is shut down. So really, PSes get shut down for good reasons, and there's no defending them if they get shut down.

@devil

I dont know what you're ranting about, but the general concensus is that MSEA is alot better than GMS in term of managements, contents and moderation. MSEA seems to actually do something about the bad situations. That is a huge initiative in my book, compares to GMS where they dont give a crap, yet bashing the pservers like they care about their servers.

contents.........i doubt so maybe for some maps only,last time i agree to this but now no.....

Managements..........i doubt so

they did not do much for the bad situations,glitches.....just fixed,rollback......2x EXP and 2x Drop Rate,HT Hacking.....although did smth but not sufficient enough to prevent it,i heard the HT hackers found another way and lastly MSEA experiences many latency issues compared to GMS

Hey, more PSes going down.

And those of you saying that PSes don't affect the companies running MS, as many before have said they do. If someone was to spend $20 on maple one month and then doesn't because they played a PS instead, that's $20 that maple lost out on. Multiply it a few hundred times, and you're losing thousands of dollars.

Not to mention the people that go on PSes a few times for kicks and giggles, decide regular MS isn't worth it compared to PSes, and then quit the game altogether even when the PS is shut down. So really, PSes get shut down for good reasons, and there's no defending them if they get shut down.

The thing is, the people who play PS dont/wont pay money to play Maple so Nexon isnt losing anything. These people will not be moving back to Maple and paying to play, they will likely move on to something else that truly is free to play(as much as Nexon like to promote Maple as free to play we all know it really isnt).

I don't think the real problem here if PS are doing bad or good, we all know they are doing bad, but what are the real servers doing. You should complain more about Asiasoft/Nexon not doing their jobs than about PS getting shut. PS get money from donations, money those players could be using to gach in the real server or even to buy ITCG (GMS). it could be a lil of money but we are talking about Nexon/Asiasoft (**cough1600$ for a spear cough**). As for the ppl that leaves legal servers, they, sometimes, come back when new content is released. (I know some friends who returned after pirates were released).

contents.........i doubt so maybe for some maps only,last time i agree to this but now no.....

Managements..........i doubt so

they did not do much for the bad situations,glitches.....just fixed,rollback......2x EXP and 2x Drop Rate,HT Hacking.....although did smth but not sufficient enough to prevent it,i heard the HT hackers found another way and lastly MSEA experiences many latency issues compared to GMS

Content wise, MSEA starts out after GMS. To be where they are now, you cannot deny the efforts they put into it. GMS gets some, MSEA gets some, but for them to be where they are at the moment, you cant deny their efforts.

Management wise, they have more GM presences, they have more concerns for the community from the way they demonstrated. Its funny you said they didnt do much for the bad situations, but at least they're making an attempt to stop selling zhelms and HT hacking etc.

As for hacking prevention, IMO is a very hard thing to do. Its like saying why cant AVG/Norton etc... prevents this virus from happening? Most of the time, the exploit got abused and thus virus/hacks existed to take advantages of it. There're certain steps used during development and testing phases to try to mitigate as many of these as possible.

Therefore, with regards to hacking, you will most likely be responding to it. Temporary responses may include GMs banning hackers while a long-term response is to fix the bug/loop hole. With relative to responses, the GMS team seems to have taken this word out of their dictionary. At least there're still hopes for MSEA. Wolf spiders in GMS for example has been a well known hacker paradise for ages. The viking vac in the old days and now the new tele hack at viking seems to be ignored by the GMS GMs (if they existed).

As for laggy servers, there're many factors for this, slow servers, routing issues, pipeline bandwidths, infrastructures, etc. Some are fixable by a company, while others cannot.

When will these people ever learn. Play the damn game how it's meant to be played, or make your own game, without taking other people's pomegranate.

Definition of Profit

1: a valuable return : gain
2: the excess of returns over expenditure in a transaction or series of transactions ; especially : the excess of the selling price of goods over their cost
3: net income usually for a given period of time
4: the ratio of profit for a given year to the amount of capital invested or to the value of sales
5: the compensation accruing to entrepreneurs for the assumption of risk in business enterprise as distinguished from wages or rent
[COLOR="RoyalBlue"]
Ok I know there are pservers out there that only take donations till they cover thier costs, after that they shut down thier donations.

Also the current rate of US Dollars to Thailand Baht is, 1.00 to 34.9498.
So 1,000,000 baht is only $28,603.49 dollars.[/COLOR]

yay finally i so happy