Korean court orders NCSoft to pay more than $4 million over hacked game accounts Humphrey Cheung April 28, 2006 21:23
Seoul (South Korea) - A Korean court has ordered NCSoft, the makers of the MMORPG Lineage and Lineage 2, to pay $500 per person to owners of hacked game accounts. Back in May 2004, 8,500 Lineage 2 accounts were hacked after NCSoft forgot to encrypt a database log file that contained usernames and passwords. The total payout is around $4,250,000.
Lineage was originally released in 1998, and in its prime, garnered four million monthly subscribers, mostly in Korea and other Asian countries. Lineage 2 was released in the United States in 2004, but has faced intense competition from World of Warcraft, which now has more than six million subscribers.
They don't quote a source and I haven't been able to find any confirmation of this story yet but here's some background on the suit from The Korea Times: