>Dev leaks code and database a few months after shut down to one reverse engineer
>Reverse engineer makes a viable project in a few months talks about it a few time and goes dark.
>Secretly starts a private server where the elite and connected members of the CoH community can gather and play a fully working version of their game over the next seven years.
>During the seven years the private server uses a combination of communal fear, threat of loss of access to the game, and outright gaslighting of the community, as well as smoke screens to avoid detection.
>Information leaks because of inviting someone who after about a year of playing, couldn't keep their mouth shut and posted youtube videos exposing it all.
>Youtube videos are buried by members of Private server by this point called SCORE, secret cabal of reverse engineers, and go mostly unwatched for a few months.
>SCORE is forced to go public and present a statement because the videos were found by MassivelyOP's reporters who engage in actual journalism and track down the people involved in the private server.
>SCORE is then forced to release the leaked code because of mass community outcry and a mass of witch hunts starting for SCORE members(Of which there were somehow two thousand by this point of it with an average US prime time peak of 200.)
>Currently the code is released but the databases are being scrubbed of anything that could tie back to the NCSoft employee who originally leaked it.
This all came out over the course of a few days. It's pretty fucking comic book pulpy, and also a touch cyberpunk but I figured you all would appreciate it.
TL;dr a Secret Cabal of Hackers have been running a secret dark web private server for a formerly popular MMORPG, it went almost unnoticed for years. Due to the people in charge having a pretty in depth mastery of information control and getting the right people to collude in ways that would keep them hidden. The subreddit for a long time had a blanket ban of private server discussion enforced by the automod for instance.
