Nexon says it is taking legal action against private MapleStory servers
Nexon published an open letter on 11 September about unauthorised MapleStory servers: what it says its position is, that it is taking formal legal action and has already closed a number of them, and what it says playing on one costs the player. This is that letter, recorded in full-enough detail to be argued with.
Maple Memo is the name Nexon puts on a letter to the community rather than on an announcement, and this one is addressed to all of MapleStory rather than to Classic World in particular. Nexon flags it as a Classic World post anyway, which is the part worth noticing: the letter arrived six weeks before Classic World’s Grand Launch, and the audience it is aimed at overlaps almost exactly with the people who have spent twenty years playing old MapleStory somewhere other than on Nexon’s servers.
The position
The first section is a copyright claim and nothing else. Nexon says the client, the server software, the source code, the art, the characters, the world design and the music are its intellectual property and protected under copyright law; that operating a server which copies, modifies and distributes that property without authorisation is infringement; and that depending on what else is involved, other laws may apply too. Nothing in it is new as a legal position. What is new is that Nexon is saying it in a letter to the community rather than in a takedown notice, and that the letter is signed by “The MapleStory Team” rather than by a named executive the way the Ossyria report was.
What Nexon says it is doing about it
Formal legal action against operators, already under way, and Nexon says it is producing results: a number of servers have stopped, more matters are open, and it intends to keep going for as long as it takes. The letter then addresses operators directly and tells them to treat it as formal notice: stop, and remove the content, and understand that Nexon intends to identify anyone who does not and to pursue every remedy available to it.
To anyone currently operating an unauthorized MapleStory server, please treat this as formal notice. We ask that you cease operation and remove all MapleStory content without delay. Operators who choose to continue should understand that we intend to identify them and to pursue the full range of remedies available to us.
What it says to players
This is the longest section and the one that is not a legal notice. Nexon opens it by granting the point that people playing on these servers are long-time players attached to old versions of the game and to the communities around them, and says it would rather be straightforward than talk past them. It then makes three claims, and they are worth separating because only the first is about the law.
- Playing on one is not neutral: it means downloading and running an unauthorised copy of the client, which breaks the terms of service, and Nexon says the use of unauthorised copies of copyrighted software can carry legal risk for the individual depending on jurisdiction and circumstances.
- Enforcement is aimed at the people who make these servers possible, which Nexon says includes the support structure around the operators and not only the operators themselves.
- These servers offer none of the protections of the official service: account credentials, personal information and any payment made to an operator sit outside Nexon’s safeguards and outside its ability to help.
It closes on stability rather than on law, and it is the closest the letter comes to an argument aimed at somebody currently playing: Nexon says its enforcement is ongoing and expanding, and that servers which look established today may not be operating tomorrow. The last lines point at the official site for Global MapleStory and Classic World, and at the player support portal for reporting a server - and thank the people who have already reported one, which is the only place the letter asks the community for anything.
What the letter does not cover
It is about servers and about the client software they run: operators, the structure around them, and players who connect to one. Nothing in it is addressed to anything else, and this site is not going to extend it on Nexon’s behalf - a summary that turned four sections about running servers into general advice about MapleStory fan projects would be inventing a claim and attributing it to a publisher’s lawyers. The letter is two screens long and linked from the top of this page; anybody who needs to know exactly what it says about their own situation should read it rather than this.