People being hacked since the last Server Check.

Hey everyone, an actual lawyer here, albeit not an American one. This is NOT legal advice, just some speculation for my own amusement.

What Eos and some other people have said is correct; just because you put disclaimers in your contract, it doesn't necessarily disclaim you from liability. In fact (at least in Australia) courts are very suspicious of contracts that have incredibly wide disclaimer clauses that try to negate the effects of existing laws. A prime example is the chunk of text that Owl posted from Nexon's TOS that begins with "NEITHER THE COMPANY NOR ANY OF OUR PARENTS, SUBSIDIARIES, AFFILIATES, LICENSORS, SUPPLIERS, ADVERTISERS, SPONSORS OR PARTNERS...". Over here, I'd imagine it would be laughed at then completely disregarded. It probably acts against the interests of Nexon because if they had made a less retardedly wide clause, and instead wrote a more practical disclaimer disclaiming some parties of liability (e.g. certain directors etc), then it would have a better standing. I don't think Nexon's TOS was written by a lawyer, or at least, not a good one.

In relation to whether Nexon should be held liable for hacked accounts, my initial gut feeling is that it’s a negligence matter rather than a contracts matter.

Let’s say that Nexon was hacked and people’s accounts, including the accounts of people who paid real money, were compromised. Was Nexon negligent? I don’t want to get into negligence law, but I imagine that Nexon would say that they already do what is reasonably required of them to secure accounts. They have password system, PIC system, email verification, reminders to players to change their passwords etc. Unless you can prove that what they do is sub-standard compared to other services of similar ilk, then I think they actually have a pretty strong argument that they did not breach their duty of care to players if hackers somehow hacked into their system to steal data. I don’t know what the industry standard is (if there even is a standard) but I think that’s where the crux of the arguments will be.

There are also a host of consumer laws that probably have relevance, though it's probably different in the States. But again, warranties about services etc, comes down to how reasonable any such expectations ought to be.

See, the thing is, it's very possible that the login function on the site isn't secure and that it's possible to obtain the encrypted password, and then un-encrypt it.
I assume that is not industry standard.
I feel like that would be considered negligence, as they've created and ignored a gaping security breach that would be fixed very soon (or not allowed to happen in the first place) in other games.

Also, who wants to take Nexon to court for their Terms of Service? If anyone's Australian, melinda can help them (yeah i'm offering her w/out her consent, I'm sure she'll be fine with it).