Recent Ekura arrests

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Here's the takeaway. This video is a ~1-hour Czech stream/recap breaking down why Ekura (a long-running Czech Metin2 private server) suddenly went dark. The creator is clear she's not an insider - it's her piecing together public records + community chatter, presumption of innocence applies, nothing is court-proven yet.

 

The core story

- Ekura went offline and its domains (ekura.cz, syndicate.cz) were pulled - listed as blocked by order of criminal-justice authorities. That's what tipped people off it wasn't just a normal outage.

- Police (Nový Jičín economic-crime unit) charged two men, ~46–47 years old, for copyright infringement and database-rights violations tied to Metin2.

- The whole thing was triggered by a single anonymous email tip - not GameForge sending lawyers. Months of investigation followed, then they moved in and seized computers, disks, cash and real estate worth ~12 million CZK.

- If convicted, they face up to 8 years in prison.

 

What Ekura actually was

- Run by the company Syndicate Entertainment s.r.o., founded 2010 in Příbor (small town, ~8,300 people, Moravian-Silesian region) by Robert Zinek (nick "Deroin") and Petr Číšek. Ran ~16 years.

- The big myth busted: some people believed Ekura was "official/licensed." It was not. The only thing they held was a registered trademark on the names "Syndicate"/"Ekura" - nothing licensing Metin2's actual game code. They ran on the leaked Metin2 source, offered the game free-to-play, and made money selling character upgrades/enhancements - officially ~10M CZK declared.

 

The ironic backstory

- Ekura had prior court history, including a case where Syndicate itself sued another private server for copying its website - i.e. they enforced copyright while pirating Metin2's engine. (Took 3 years, won 20,000 CZK.)

- In 2014 the company applied to the town of Příbor for a crime-prevention grant (denied), and even organized a rock/metal festival ("Sinfest") - she jokes that players' money for in-game cosmetics effectively funded a small-town festival.

 

Community angle / warnings

- GMs probably know nothing more than players. Many were unpaid teens rewarded with in-game currency. When panic hit, the Discord just repeated "technical problems" and banned people asking questions - which she found sketchy.

- Talk of money laundering / crypto-mining / tax evasion is pure speculation - the actual charges are only copyright/database rights.

- A "Syndicate 2" revival message circulating on Discord is likely spam/scam/AI-generated - and reviving the name is legally risky since it's trademarked.

 

I've seen biggest pservers in Poland either remove their TOS or just straight switch their legal entity to wyoming LLCs to mitigate IP infringement legal related risks.

Whats your opinion on this?

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Here's an excerpt from official czech document, generated by LLM. This is a different case from 2 years ago in Czechia regarding Ashia2 server.

 

This is a criminal judgment (rozsudek) from the District Court in Tachov, Czech Republic - case no. 9 T 179/2024, an anonymized copy. Here's what it covers.

The core case

The court, presided over by Mgr. Michaela Řezníčková, approved plea agreements (dohody o vině a trestu) that had been reached with the prosecutor on 4 November 2024. Three defendants were found guilty: two individuals and one company.

The offense was running illegal private servers of the online game Metin2. From at least 13 October 2017 to 29 May 2024, the two individuals obtained the game's source code without authorization, modified it, and created near-identical copies under the names Titaniagame, Titania2, and Ashia2. They hosted these on their own websites, gave the public unrestricted access without the copyright holder's consent, and ran "Itemshops" where players bought in-game currency for real money through GoPay, PayPal, Paysafe, and Stripe.

The European rights to Metin2 are held by Gameforge 4D GmbH (Germany) under a license dated 6 April 2020. The company defendant later took over the Ashia2 game and ran it from 30 June 2023 to 29 May 2024.

Money involved

The court documented gross income (neoprávněný prospěch — unlawful gain, not proven damages) as roughly:

First individual: at least 19.6 million CZK

Second individual: at least 3.5 million CZK

The company: at least 13.2 million CZK

Charges

Copyright infringement under § 270 of the Criminal Code and unauthorized access to a computer system under § 230, both as joint offenses. The company was additionally prosecuted under the Act on Criminal Liability of Legal Persons.

Sentences

Individual 1: a fine of 500 daily rates at 1,200 CZK (600,000 CZK total), plus extensive forfeiture — a plot of land, numerous computers and servers, hard drives, silver and gold bars, 8,000 CZK cash, a Ledger crypto hardware wallet, and recovery-phrase documents.

Individual 2: a 3-year prison sentence suspended for a 3-year probation period, a fine of 220 daily rates at 500 CZK (110,000 CZK), plus forfeiture of computers, a phone, and documents.

The company: a fine, forfeiture of a bank account balance (698.48 CZK), and — notably — dissolution of the legal person.

The damages claim

The injured party claimed about 36.4 million CZK, arguing that every crown the defendants earned represented lost profit. The court rejected this and referred them to civil proceedings, reasoning that the actual damage was never proven — since Metin2 can be played without buying items, it isn't established that players would have spent the same money on the legitimate game.

The correction order

The document ends with a separate resolution (usnesení) dated 3 March 2025 fixing a clerical error: the company's fine was written as 790 daily rates / 790,000 CZK, but the judgment as actually announced was 79 daily rates × 1,000 CZK = 79,000 CZK. The written version was corrected to match.

All defendants and the prosecutor waived their right to appeal, so the judgment became final on 6 February 2025.

Edited July 21 by b6d4a82c15

[hvi 44]

Sounds like czech law enforcement takes metin2 pervers seriously. Do we have any other example in other countries? Strictly for copyright infringement

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4 hours ago, hvi said:

Sounds like czech law enforcement takes metin2 pervers seriously. Do we have any other example in other countries? Strictly for copyright infringement

I dont think it was just IP claims, there could be something else and then IP claims on top of that.  But I don't think there's enough reliable information that I know of to tell for sure