Also note that laws were passed in the US about 6 months ago i think saying that privately owned servers of games are Legal. I mean, i dont come from the US but i remember the big mess that happened on The Morning Show (An australian New Team) where they had a debate about whether Australia should do it too. Also my husband is American and has stated that pservers based in the US are legal.
My thoughts? Well, i hate to say this but maybe your dedicated server decided to shut down your server in an attempt to take your money and run, if its a company, they might be shutting down and going into recievership or liquidation and are trying to get rid of some of their expenses. (They also dont have to give you any money back that you have paid for it) Or maybe they want more money from you (if you pay/month or something make sure you STOP all payments to them) even if they're privately owned and all hush hush and that, i doubt that their company would just let that happen, they would know that the laws say you can have your pserver in the US. So, honestly i think its them thats done this whole ploy.... or you chose someone really stupid to host it.
The chances that someone hacking would go to this much troble then leave the back up of the whole thing on your computer are phenominal. I'm going to stick with thinking that your dedi host has done it.
Lets just comprise a list of things that dont add up in their story.
-Pservers are legal in america so AGE, SONO and other companies have NO RIGHT to force shut down a server.
-If they're going into recievership, they now have no reason to give you back your money.
-If they're asking for more money.... well, that ones obvious.
-AGE wouldnt send out a GS OR a GM to do it, they would either:
1. Call the company themselves because they are a company, like an office and that.
2. Request of SONO to do it because AGE even if pservers were illegal has no right to do this, the copyright is by SONO, so AGE just bought the rights to produce it off their site.
-Hackers that have the time or patience to hack a dedi host would not leave the back up on anone computer.
-A hacker that was working this hard would have made the story more believable.
-GS's on AGE are pretty much babysitters so they cant force pservers to shut down (no offence to those GS's out there)
-DirtNap is actually a really decent GS and a good one at that, they wouldnt do this to pservers.
-Killing pservers is not going to stop them, especially if they only kill 5 of them o.o
So thats the holes with the whole fiasco. I'm pinning this on whoever your dedi host is. If in like a month or so they come back and say "Here, we fixed it, give us money" say NO. They are scamming you. Furthermore, stop all payments to the dedi host and make sure they cant access your bank account for any more money!
This is wy vengeance runs off a dediacted host at our main admins house. You can pick up a decent one for just over $1000 on some sites, i'm sure america have somethig like PC Easy or something.
This just reinforces the idea that you shouldnt et anyone else hold your baby... or in this case your private server.
My advice? Buy your OWN dedi server from somewhere online, bens server is fantastic, very rarely do we have any type of trouble with it, at first we did but we fixed that. You just gotta be nice to em and make sure you give em a kiss and tell em u love em.
Well, thats my lil wall of info ^.^
Thanks for reading
[GM]Angel <3