Historical Archive · Dossiers
Dossier · 2024-2026 · updated September 6, 2026
What the scene knows, what we know
The most serious public reconstruction of the leak is Exynox's, from within the Western scene (March 2024). It has the artifact, and guards it better than anyone. This archive has the story around the artifact. The comparison, point by point.
Where Exynox is ahead, and it must be said
His report of March 17, 2024, is the starting point for everything: he is the first to publish the fingerprints of game0901.tar.gz from his own backup DVDs, names the four tarballs, honestly reconstructs ("probably") the list from a Polish inventory, and catalogs 108 official clients with MD5, SHA-1 and CRC32. F He has the artifact, and a client collection nobody matches. Without his work, this archive would not have known where to start. What follows is not a critique: it is the delta.
The comparison
| Topic | What the scene knows (Exynox) | What we know |
|---|---|---|
| 2009 motive and mechanism | "a Chinese person, rain, published the files" | The HK→TW merger on 8/26/2009 at 10:00, "after many months of testing" F; the shutdown on 3/3/2010 because the licensor did not renew F; an industry entirely on lease, publisher and pirates in the same Taipei colocation facility F; the leak machine in Shenzhen, administered from Sichuan F. The file is the byproduct of a migration. |
| Mainland ≠ Hong Kong | "Chinese files" | The build is by Run Up (Big5, hongkong locale, Taiwan publisher's client) F; mainland Chinese Metin2 never shut down and in December 2009 was launching the sequel F; the 4/28/2008 order hit Metin 1 T. |
| The prehistory | first Chinese pserver: 2008 | 风云倚天, a commercial pserver already running on 8/14/2005, bytes in hand F; Korea → China → the rest pipeline, proven by client_string.txt from 11/27/2005 F; the HK serverfiles were running in Fuzhou from 6/7/2008 F; Italians were running them in May 2009 F. |
| Dating from metadata | has the file | The packaging date from the gzip header; fingerprints and second-precision dates preserved in period metadata. F |
yt2.rar | lost | Lost with proof: the fingerprint is known (bb0f21f8…), and a 2009 study of the architecture of the service that hosted it explains the automatic deletion of large, seldom-requested files F. At 155 MB it cannot be rain's 639 MB package. |
| The original Chinese post | the 9/23/2009 post with the 20 coins | The founding post is from 9/19/2009, 00:56 F; rain is UID 3, the administrator F; the 20-coin paywall and the 148 buyers postdate December 2009 F. |
| Who rain was | "hacked a Korean server" (forum rumour) | False: no Korean server; administrator of a one-click forum born in 2005, possibly the operator of 5imt2 T. |
| The source leak (2014) | kraizy, January 2014 | TEC email of 11/25/2013 12:34, taken from the Korean patch server F; last internal mtime 9/24/2013 22:14 F; window narrowed from ten weeks to two, thanks to the Easter without its Halloween F. |
| The law | the German cases | Three geographies: Turkey from 12/24/2009 (Gaziantep hits pservers by name, five years before Germany) F; China convicts over Metin 1, never over Metin2 F; Korea acts ex officio F; Webzen issued only one DMCA notice out of 22,114 F. |
| State filings and accounts | — | Ymir's incorporation 11/17/1999 F; Metin2 classified on 7/9/2004 (no. 2004-OL0647) F; Ymir's price, 77.8 billion won F; the Run Up license that enters the record and never leaves it F; the 2025 Chinese approval F. |
| Oldest artifacts | CN 2005 client (as "2004 beta") | The "2004 Beta Client" is the CN 2005 client byte for byte (MSI from 9/5/2005) F; Korean Metin2.exe from 7/16/2004 dated by the PE header F; yt2_pack.exe from 10/8/2004 F; the first client's name, MetinII0_0_1.exe (3/8/2003) F; the first international site was a byte-for-byte copy of a page from the Korean site F. |
| Build taxonomy | 34k / 40k / 40250 as generations | They are Ymir Perforce changelists (p4 changes -m1) F; the oldest number read is svn revision 404 from 2009 F. |
| His two open questions | "what was in the other three tarballs?", "who has a copy of yt2.rar?" | The byte count excludes the full ports.tar.gz I; the Polish list is not the 2009 inventory F; the only claimed copy belongs to a Chinese user who never shared it, and an MD5 would settle it. |
| The scene's center of gravity | Germany / Poland | In August 2009 a third of the leak server's players were in Poland F; Turkey was the largest community in the world F; the circulation peak in the West is 2016-2017, not 2009 F. |
In one line
Exynox has the bytes, and guards them better than anyone. We have the documents that say where they came from, why they came out, and what the scene believed wrongly for fifteen years. The two together are the history; apart, they are a file and a legend.
Exhibits cited
- game0901.tar.gz Owned 142,394,597 bytes
- yt2.rar Lost 155,567,047 bytes
- Metin2_CN_2005.exe Debunked 304,870,262 bytes
- fyyt.exe (风云倚天, 2005) + ip_chn.es + pkdu.zip Owned 422,712 bytes
- Metin2.exe (Korean launcher, 16/7/2004) Owned 540,672 bytes
- Official closure announcement of 龍駒 Online (3/3/2010) Document 115,029 bytes