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MapleSEA taking action against Private Servers?!
Topic Started: Jan 5 2009, 01:10 AM (337 Views)
Kamikaze
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RazorNion Productions
MapleSEA Forums
 
As reported in an article titled Home-run online game servers risk legal action in today’s Straits Times (Dec 30, Tuesday), various groups of people, including a sixteen year-old boy named Sean Lee, have been running private servers for MapleStory from their homes or offices. They are currently under investigation.

It’s quite a shame that this is happening here in Singapore, especially when we have been informed that it is illegal and an intellectual property (IP) copyrights infringement. Under the Singapore government’s vision to turn the country into a digital entertainment and content hub, the IP and copyrights of all content providers will be strongly protected.

Game developers do not appreciate having their work being pirated and stolen. Worse still, if piracy becomes more rampant here, they might come to the conclusion that our region is not worth introducing their new games and content.

Currently, MapleStory is already a free-to-play game. We can download and play it free-of-charge so players really shouldn’t see the need to resort to private game servers to enjoy the game. Like 15 year-old Phyllis Wan (from Pei Hwa Secondary School) said in the report, “Playing on a private server defeats the purpose of the game. There is no challenge if everything is easily obtainable.”

Let’s be fair to the game developers and other players. Private servers do not benefit the game because they are not officially supported by developers to eliminate game glitches and errors. There is no fun in private servers.

As a final discouragement and to illustrate the severity of this illegal activity, Daniel Lim, an intellectual property lawyer from Stamford Law Corporation, said in the report that in addition to lawsuits by the copyright owner, people running private servers can face a fine of up to $20,000 and six months in jail.

So please stay away from private servers. As of now, AsiaSoft will be taking all steps necessary to protect the IP copyrights of the company and its partner game developers.


AsiaOne Report
 
SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD Sean Lee is a 'wanted man'. AsiaSoft Online, the official local distributor of one of Singapore's most popular online games Maple Story, is looking to shut down the private servers operated by the teen and about a dozen or so others like him who run illegal versions of the game.


Sean runs it out of his bedroom, where he has an Internet connection that can handle as much traffic as those of many small companies.

Every day, thousands of people flock to his server to battle monsters, upgrade their characters and to interact with one another.

But unlike on the game's official server, they do not have to pay real-world cash for virtual cards that allow them to upgrade their characters with items like new clothes.

AsiaSoft Online is not impressed with this budding online entrepreneur. It plans to crack down on those who operate private servers.

'We are currently working with developers to take action against the service providers of private servers,' said Mr Ng Kok Khwang, marketing director of AsiaSoft Online.

Despite the fact that it is illegal, Sean continues to run his server out of his parents' four-room Housing Board flat because it has spawned a thriving online community.

'If I shut it down, I will be letting them down,' he said.

He owns one of the many home-run private servers - or computer networks - in Singapore, where online games can be played. The dozen or so biggest can host thousands of players.

People like Sean buy bandwith from information technology companies for about $150. This allows them to host games like Maple Story, which has one million registered players in Singapore.

But the private server games come without subscription fees.

Instead of paying for the upgrade cards - which can cost anywhere from $5 to $32 each - players are asked only for donations to keep the servers running.

'Some items in games are rare and impossible to get on the official server,' said 15-year-old Melissa Ong.

'On a private server, I get the chance to obtain it and test it out.'

The games on private servers can also be modified, making them easier and faster to complete. For example, in some pirated versions of Maple Story, killing a snail can give a player 50 experience points - almost 20 times the value in the original game.

'The main game takes too long. This way I get to see more of the game faster,' said Irwin Teo, 17.

Ten out of 20 teens who spoke to The Straits Times said they preferred playing the game on private servers.

Sean started his private server in June after the one he was playing on was shut down when the operators ran out of cash.

He said he does not make money and hosts the game only for his friends. But within three months of starting up, his server had grown to feature as many as 32,000 players.

It is all, of course, illegal. Hosts who reproduce the game are violating copyright laws. Intellectual property lawyer Daniel Lim, from Stamford Law Corporation, said that in addition to lawsuits by the copyright owner, people running private servers can face a fine of up to $20,000 and six months in jail.

Despite knowing this, Sean still plans to continue hosting his private server.

'If I receive a warning letter, then I will shut it down immediately,' he said. That was the same deal he struck with his parents, whom he claims, know what he is up to.

As for the players, not all prefer going private and some have returned to the official server after trying out private ones.

'Playing on a private server defeats the purpose of the game,' said 15-year-old Phyllis Wan, from Pei Hwa Secondary School.

'There is no challenge if everything is easily obtainable.'
Edited by Kamikaze, Jan 7 2009, 07:21 PM.
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Sweeper
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This isn't new... these letters come out for every single mmo that has private servers-

WoW
RO
Lineage2
FlyFF
Runescape
LoA
MuOnline
Knight Online

Those are just a couple big games to name a few that there are headhunters that basically find the most popular server and shut it down.

It really doesn't matter how much money the server makes it could make $0 but the thing is because people are playing private servers instead of the officials then that means the companies are losing customers which like in Maplestory they have sponsers as seen by the NPC's all around in the game - CVS, Target, blah blah blah also they prevent the people from actually purchasing subscriptions and things like NX and such.

In the end its a scary thought, but it happens.
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Zeek
Just another average member
Kamikaze
Jan 5 2009, 01:10 AM
Like 15 year-old Phyllis Wan (from Pei Hwa Secondary School) said in the report, “Playing on a private server defeats the purpose of the game. There is no challenge if everything is easily obtainable.”

Let’s be fair to the game developers and other players. Private servers do not benefit the game because they are not officially supported by developers to eliminate game glitches and errors. There is no fun in private servers.
ROFL

Yes, let's ask some 15 year old kid for his opinion. Because obviously, the word of a minor means so much in general law. Besides, plenty of private servers have things still to be challenging. If you were to interview me, I'd say that "There is no challenge if everything isn't reasonably obtainable." Which, for official servers, is true for those who are non-paying customers.

And saying there is no fun in private servers? Period? Who died and made him god? Opinions are not to be stated as facts, thanks. And the glitches and errors comment is ironic. Sure, there have been ongoing problems that nobody can seem to fix that GMS doesn't have, but consider how long GMS left the Mortal Blow disconnect to plague bowmen. The OdinMS developers weren't official, but they were easily ten times as responsive and active in fixing glitches than the entire "official" team running GMS.
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wietepiet
~Never Alone~
Completely agreed Girlfriend.
If you take a look at the time it took Nexon to ''make'' Maple Story and how long it took Odin to make their maple story then Odin was definitely faster. And they were with less people than Nexon too.Matze and Serpendiem could update their files within days when a new patch came out.
It's too bad that they're gone now.....
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Smiley
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(´ ;ω;­`)
@ Girlfriend, +1

It's without a doubt that even though yes, Nexon did make the game, private servers are in many aspects better. The people who casually code stuff for it are so much faster. I'm not saying Nexon is complete crap, I mean yeah, you have to give them some credit. But every little thing with Nexon is slow, slow, slow.

That whole thing is ridiculous. They try to make it seem like something serious, but look at it, really. That whole quote is one big "BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW."

QQ more Nexon. x]

Edited by Smiley, Jan 5 2009, 03:30 PM.
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Posted ImageExia
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MapleSEA is owned by Asiasoft right? And are they located in Singapore? o.o
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Sweeper
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yuh, Just so you guys know Asiasoft comes out with stuff 50x faster then Nexon does... Iono if any of you have played in Asiasoft's Versions of Maplestory but they are so much better then GMS. Strange how Asiasoft just publishes it they don't own it, just rights to it and they do so much more and faster then Nexon does.

And to Smiley- Nexon didn't make the game, Wizet did. Wizet Merged into Nexon, Giving Nexon full rights to the game.
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Zeek
Just another average member
Sweeper
Jan 5 2009, 08:13 PM
And to Smiley- Nexon didn't make the game, Wizet did. Wizet Merged into Nexon, Giving Nexon full rights to the game.
Some stuff has been created by Nexon America. Amoria and Masteria (New Leaf City and Crimsonwood) both originated in GMS, and were developed after the merger. Although a majority of the content we get is translated from the Korean version of Maple Story. Part of the criticism of Nexon America is that not only does it seemingly take forever to translate and port over what kMS already has, but when we finally do get it, most of the time, the translated text has typos or is written in mangled english. I still remember when I took my first 3rd job advancement to become a Sniper, Athena was gender confused over her dark clone, first saying I would meet her through the dimensional portal, then saying to bring back the charm that drops from him. And the content that we do create here in the states ends up with problems too, like the crappy hit boxes for Wolf Spiders, Elderwraiths, and Bigfoot, all of which are Masteria monsters. And let's not forget the fiasco of forgetting Bigfoot's boss tag and banning whoever they THOUGHT abused the fact that you could poison/shadow web it!`
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jojo777720
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Sweeper
Jan 5 2009, 08:13 PM
yuh, Just so you guys know Asiasoft comes out with stuff 50x faster then Nexon does... Iono if any of you have played in Asiasoft's Versions of Maplestory but they are so much better then GMS. Strange how Asiasoft just publishes it they don't own it, just rights to it and they do so much more and faster then Nexon does.

And to Smiley- Nexon didn't make the game, Wizet did. Wizet Merged into Nexon, Giving Nexon full rights to the game.
It seems that Nexon actually made the game WORSE, I mean, before wizet merged, they were doing better.
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Sweeper
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^ Yeah. Although there wasn't much to do besides grind really it was better I suppose.

Btw LOL at NLC, that was a joke. There was a newsletter somewhere about how mad Asiasoft was at Nexon for fucking up CWK, the portals are all fucked up and sloppy, sure its suppose to be kind of a maze but not in that manner. Nexon just made NLC for the money that people would spend on gachapon. And when NLC did come out they did and still do make a crap load of money from the gachapon tickets used to get white scrolls from NLC.

Although NLC, did make the life of an assassin and a 2h swordie ALOT easier because of WS in Clocktower.
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Kamikaze
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RazorNion Productions
-Updated-
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jojo777720
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Sweeper
Jan 7 2009, 06:07 AM
^ Yeah. Although there wasn't much to do besides grind really it was better I suppose.

Btw LOL at NLC, that was a joke. There was a newsletter somewhere about how mad Asiasoft was at Nexon for fucking up CWK, the portals are all fucked up and sloppy, sure its suppose to be kind of a maze but not in that manner. Nexon just made NLC for the money that people would spend on gachapon. And when NLC did come out they did and still do make a crap load of money from the gachapon tickets used to get white scrolls from NLC.

Although NLC, did make the life of an assassin and a 2h swordie ALOT easier because of WS in Clocktower.
on top of that, it seems that there were A LOT, i mean A LOT more hackers when Nexon merged with Wizet.
Not only that, many of the promises Nexon started to give would either never come true, or take one month or longer then what they had promised.

They even screwed some really good maps up, such as the coolie zombie maps. Those used to be SO awesome for training because it was flat.
But guess what nexon did to the maps? The split the maps so that they had at least 3 platforms in each map.

It even took them soo long to add the Lich in (Monster in the top left or top right corner of the zombies map that if you hit it, you will be sent to town).
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Ryanide
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Sup, Singaporean here.


PS: Asiasoft just 'hosts/distributes' the game, not really doing anything much other than helping out with advertisement stuff, etc.

Nexon/Wizet are the ones that handle MSEA.


PPS: Items in game are pretty much made by the Korean people, with some help from the experts from other countries. I overheard a chat with a GM saying that to develop content, the staff from Nexon America(just an example) have to do the planning, not really design. Korean designers have to fly in from Korea and finally start doing the graphics/etc.
Edited by Ryanide, Jan 8 2009, 08:22 AM.
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