FBI shut down the unauthorized computer game server L2Extreme, which hosted the NCSoft MMORPG Lineage II. Owners of L2Extreme provided its 50,000 active users with service and code for the online game for a fee. NCSoft claimed millions of dollars of annual loss due to this illegal service. L2Extreme operated pirated server software copied from the NCSoft server software. Users then registered with L2Extreme to play Lineage II instead of using NCSoft’s servers.

The financial effect is of course significant, but NCSoft also had to defend its intellectual property rights. The case, at first glance, is similar to the Blizzard v. BnetD case. However, BnetD reverse engineered the Blizzard server software without direct infringement on the original software. It was a fair use copy with no copyright violation involved. Contrarily, L2Extreme simply pirated the software from NCSoft. In addition, L2Extreme was a profitable business whereas BnetD was fueled by volunteer game enthusiasts. Otherwise, the details of both cases seem very similar.

Comparing the Blizzard v. BnetD case with this event, it becomes clear that seemingly minor details are in fact the deciding factors in many copyright decisions. In one, the FBI abruptly closed down operation without proper legal decision whereas in the other, the original game company could not persuade the court of any wrongdoing on the defendant’s part. Noticeably, intellectual property laws and their applications to the game industry remains a relatively new field. Hence, it is difficult to pinpoint what is right and what is wrong. Perhaps the single greatest law which many intellectual property and gaming related cases are based on is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. However, there are many critics of the DMCA simply because of some of the consequences of invoking the Act. It remains to be seen how long the DMCA can last before undergoing major renovations. Much of that is derived from the evolutionary nature of gaming, where much change can occur in just a few years. Laws that are applicable in one year may become outdated the next year. This is the inevitable change of technology.

In the late 1990s, Connectix sold a product called the Virtual Game Station, an emulator program that could play Sony Playstation games, intended for play on the Playstation game console, on Apple Macintosh computers. Bleem, a vendor of Playstation emulator software for Windows computers, was also sued. Initially, Sony won a permanent injunction against the Connectix Virtual Game Station in 1999, but the decision was successfully appealed in 2000. Connectix and Bleem both won rulings that their reverse engineering of the Sony products constituted fair and non-infringing uses. However, their products were eventually taken off the market because they could not bear the high costs of litigation against Sony.

Emulators typically contained additional features not found on the real console and generally had completely different interfaces. To create the emulator, Connectix programmers had to first purchase a Sony Playstation and reverse engineer the source code. The court ruled that this and other intermediate copies made by Connectix were all legitimate fair uses. Regardless of Connectix and Bleem’s financial state, the landmark decision shocked the gaming industry. Emulators existed prior to the trial, but the question of their legality was always unknown.

Since personal computers are much more popular than game consoles due to their ability to run many types of applications, gamers have the option of purchasing emulators and emulator games instead of a separate game console. For Sony, one of their primary arguments was that this software would negatively impact the market for their consoles. Vendors of the system claimed that emulators would take away from their console and game revenue. However, emulations of games were never the same in quality and in experience as the real games. In the end, the Sony v. Connectix trial set a huge precedent for future emulator and associated game software. As long as the software did not infringe on original intellectual property rights, then emulators were deemed lawful. A system vendor cannot prohibit the distribution of non-infringing third-party emulators such as the Virtual Game Station. The result of this case has prompted questioning of the amount of control that companies should have over their intellectual property.