This is an announcement on the board of Metin2.SG.Quote:
Our position on private servers
Over the past few weeks, our company TEC Interactive has started to take actions against the owners of certain Metin2 private servers. As we know many of you have played private servers, have friends playing them, or even are or were part of their staff.
Private servers, whatever the justification is, are illegal. The logos, imagery, content, translations and game code of Metin2 are the intellectual property of Ymir Entertainment which require a license for their use, commercial or not. Intellectual property rights are recognized by the laws of virtually every country in the world, with penalties ranging from fines to jailtime depending on the country and severity of the infringement.
Ethically, it is also wrong to freeload on the work of Ymir Entertainment and its licensees which also develop exclusive content -such as TEC Interactive. The creation, development and maintenance of the game requires effort, professional staff and careful organization that don't come for free.
Private servers profit off the work of professional programmers and artists purely for their own economical benefit. Server files are sometimes sold by corrupt employees in the black market for big sums of money. Behind the naive facade of private servers, often lucrative business are carried, involving hacking , money laundring and tax fraud.
Some private server make claims that they are technically legal because they ask for "donations". Only charity and non-profit organizations, following strict government guidelines, are authorized to collect donations. A private server collecting "Donations" still falls under the definition of a commercial enterprise. Legally the claim that you are "collecting donations" and not selling item mall has no value.
Our players have some guidelines and rules to follow when playing our server. Likewise, we have obligations towards you - keep your information secure; give right to appeal on team decisions; keep the server free of hackers, malicious users and corruption of any kind; keep the server uptime to 99%; and so on. We can't delete your account for no reason or wipe out the database. If you stop playing Metin2SG and come back a year later, you will find your account in the same place, with the same items (assuming you haven't shared your passwords obviously). Private servers set their rules for the players, but being illegal have no obligation towards you and can be closed or restarted at any time without prior warning, which happens often.
Another issue is the balance of game. In TEC Interactive, we have content which will be released at a later stage and when the stage of player progress is adequate. Removal of level cap, new maps, new monsters, new items are prepared for future release. Private servers steal this content and make a mockery of the MMORPG genre with huge experience and drop rates that destroy any challenge in the game, and "special items" -often sold for real money or gifted to friends by corrupted GM- that totally unbalance the game.
Another concern for us is the security of your data. Private servers are handed by amateurs who have no legal obligation to keep your information secure. Account information can be sold to third parties, or used to access your accounts in other services, and there is nothing you can do against it.
Some of you may think that the private server scene is just a matter some harmless kids playing. In the most part, yes. But a few servers are managed by adults who have it as their primary source of income. Unlike official servers, they don't pay any license or tax, sometimes amassing big fortunes. Of course, none of this money invested in private servers by their players, will help the development of the game, as it will only fill the pockets of their owners. Licensed servers like Metin2SG pay a royalty to Ymir Entertainment which is invested in the development of new content, thus ensuring the future of the game.
Due to the mind-numbing number of private servers that popped out in the last year, TEC Interactive has started to take action against some notorious ones. We have been answered often with childish arrogance, threats and insults from those private owners when they see their lucrative illegall business endangered. No matter what the response is, we will keep taking action against pirates and freeloaders, because we want that when you spend your money -or your playtime!- in Metin2, the profit goes to the legitimate creators of the game who have worked hard to create the content that is being used by private servers for free.
My question is: Can Tec-Interactive take any legal action on Private Servers? And on what basis?
Please respond with your opinions in English.