The FBI’s Atlanta Field Office has announced the successful takedown of a network of websites involved in large-scale piracy of video games. FBI agents dismantled the network’s infrastructure and blocked access to several of the best-known piracy sites. The operation was carried out with the support of the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) of the Netherlands, the agency responsible for investigating financial crimes.
FBI officials thanked FIOD for its assistance, noting that intellectual property piracy knows no borders and combating it requires broad international cooperation.
According to the Domain Gang website, several high-profile piracy websites have had their domains blocked and seized, including: nsw2u.com, nswdl.com, game-2u.com, bigngame.com, ps4pkg.com, ps4pkg.net and mgnetu.com.
For over four years, these websites regularly distributed pirated copies of video games – often days or even weeks before the games’ official release.
The FBI estimates that between February and May of this year alone, users downloaded more than 3.2 million pirated game copies from these websites. The resulting financial losses to the gaming industry are believed to exceed $170 million.
Visitors to the affected websites are now met with notices stating that the domains have been seized by the FBI under a court rule. It’s worth noting that the FBI has confiscated thousands of domains used for illegal activities over the years. However, maintaining these domain registrations incurs significant ongoing costs, and the start of Donald Trump’s second presidential term has brought sweeping cuts to federal spending.
There have already been cases in which the FBI declined to renew confiscated domain names, allowing them to become available for re-registration. It remains to be seen whether the domains seized in this latest operation will share the same fate.
