The Karlsruhe company Gameforge has had one of the major private servers for the MMORPG Metin2 closed with “Rubinum”. Allegedly, tens of thousands played the Korean MMORPG there.
What is Metin 2? The MMORPG Metin 2 is an almost 15-year-old South Korean online role-playing game. The game was released in Germany at the end of 2006 and reached its peak here around 2009. It managed to maintain its relevance somewhat until 2013 before it began to fade more and more.
Metin2 is still spoken of with fondness by some hardcore Asian fans today.
In Germany, Gameforge still holds the rights to Metin2. The Karlsruhe company operates many Asian MMORPGs in Europe, including titles like Aion, Runes of Magic, TERA, Guardians of Ember, and Nostale.
In May 2017, Gameforge and Webzen even brought the game Metin2 to Steam, 12 years after its release in South Korea.
Private servers with tens of thousands of players
This was Rubinum: As reported by the Polish site mmorpg.org, Rubinum was one of the largest and most well-known English-speaking private servers for Metin2. These servers are operated without a license – the actual developers do not share in the profits.
It is said that Rubinum existed since 2015 and had tens of thousands of players every day. About 900,000 characters were created on Rubinum.
What about the closure? According to MMORPG.org, Gameforge had the Rubinum server shut down. Allegedly, fines in the range of €30,000 to €100,000 are in the air, and the case is supposed to go to court. But this information, like much in this case, should be taken with caution.
It is rumored that the Rubinum servers were located in Germany and that the administrators were also from Germany. Therefore, they were able to be caught.
The pages of Rubinum are no longer accessible, anyway.
The situation regarding sources is difficult. There is little official information about it. There seems to be only a statement from a Turkish community manager of Gameforge (via board.tr.metin2). Otherwise, the news is making waves primarily on YouTube.
Other private servers of Metin2 assure their worried players: “Don’t worry, we are safe.” They use their own security and the closure of Rubinum as advertising for their own servers: “Other servers are only temporary, we are permanent,” it is said in forum discussions.
Private servers, the illegitimate children, hardly anyone talks about
Here’s what it’s all about: The most well-known closure of a private server in the MMORPG field was Blizzard against Nostalrius, which was a Vanilla server of WOW. The closure was public at that time and was widely discussed – an exception.
The servers always operate in danger of being discovered and removed when the publisher’s light shines on them. Therefore, little is openly said about private servers.
Private servers exist in the shadow world of MMORPGs. Often they are popular in Eastern Europe. On private servers, “other rules” apply:
- maybe monetization is looser, so it is cheaper to play there
- cheats are active
- or an older version of the client is running
Publishers and studios are reluctant to talk about them, they mainly want to prevent them from becoming known. Therefore, the availability of sources on such topics is difficult. Such a private server does not say: “We are located in Germany,” but much remains vague.
