MMORPG giant takes action against private servers – a fine of € 336,777 is due

The MMORPG developer Nexon is one of the largest MMO companies in the world. You have now won a lawsuit against the operator of a private server for the MMORPG Nexus: “The Kingdom of the Winds”. It is about a fine of 450 million won, about 337,000 euros.

What game is it about? NEXUS: The Kingdom of the Winds is an MMORPG that was released in South Korea on April 5, 1996, and came to the USA in 1998. Nexus is a subscription MMORPG based on Korean mythology.

The game uses 2D graphics and gives the player many opportunities to improve their own character.

Nexus is an important milestone in the development of MMORPGs:

  • Nexus is considered the technical forerunner to the ultra-popular online role-playing game Lineage from competitor NCSoft. The game is from Jake Song, one of the major MMORPG programmers in South Korea. He then did Lineage and ArcheAge.
  • In 1999, Nexus set a record with 12,263 users simultaneously active in the same world.
  • Nexus is still active today – that makes it the “longest running MMORPG with graphics” because it has been played for more than 24 years.
The MMORPG Nexus: Kingdom of the Winds is historically important. Image source: mmorpg.org.pl

What kind of complaint was that? The publisher Nexon initiated investigations against providers of private servers as early as 2018. In 2019, operators of such servers were arrested. Now the “Suwon District Court” has ruled that the operators of the private servers have to pay 450 million Korean won, which is 336,777 euros.

The ruling states that the server operators violated copyright law by copying the game without permission. They would have benefited from it and the plaintiff would have suffered damage from this illegal version.

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It is said of Nexon: It is very important for them to eliminate illegal private servers. You watch the market and react to situations.

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Private servers – playing in the gray area

Why is that important? There are private servers not only for MMORPGs like Nexus, which are rather obscure from our western point of view, but also for MMORPGs popular in the West.

Private servers in particular for games that are still being actively developed and with which the publisher still earns money are constantly afraid that a developer will take action against them.

Most private servers exist in a gray area and tend not to want to be talked about too publicly. When a private server for WoW, which offered a classic version, became very popular, Blizzard took action against him and had him shut down. Some servers also rely on finding shelter in a country to which the corporations cannot exercise direct, legal access.

Private servers for Metin 2 or Black Desert were also closed by the publishers.

The situation is somewhat different with MMORPGs that have already been discontinued by the publishers.

Private servers for Warhammer Online now appear openly and advertise that the game, which has actually been discontinued, will continue. There is a similar situation with Star Wars: Galaxies.

The original developers even seem to support this subliminally. It is not known whether the actual rights holders approve of this. Much is based on the motto “Where there is no plaintiff, there is no judge.”

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The case of Nexus shows how delicate the situation of private servers still is. There was a plaintiff and therefore a judge.

We reported on the head of Nexon in May. For him, the € 337,000 is probably just “peanuts”:

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Reference-mein-mmo.de