The developer Bungie, maker of Destiny 2, has obtained a court ruling against the cheat provider “Phoenix Digital”. They are known as AimJunkies. It is the first ruling of its kind: Bungie received money worth a good car, just over 58,000 euros. For a company like Bungie, that’s just a little bit of petty cash. But the ruling could have far-reaching consequences for the gaming industry.
This is what Bungie accused the cheat developers of: Bungie has accused the cheat providers, four men, of developing and selling cheats that allow players in the first-person shooter Destiny 2 to see through walls and instantly kill their enemies. These cheats gave users unfair advantages.
This behavior would harm the player base of Destiny 2, the developers said. They had received 6,000 complaints about the cheats and had to spend millions of US dollars to protect the player base.
They wanted compensation for this, hence the lawsuit.
Destiny 2: The most epic moments of the saga of light and darkness
More videos
Autoplay
Cheat provider feels pushed around, starts countersuit
This is what the Cheater developers said: They, in turn, launched a countersuit. The lawyers said Bungie was behaving like a schoolyard bully and wanted to intimidate the other side: “The big company is pushing around smaller ones.”
The cheaters accused Bungie of illegally gaining access to one of their computers and thus violating copyright.
Bungie responded that this is the normal process for finding cheaters and is covered by Destiny 2’s policies.
Cheaters are sued directly for cheating
What makes the process so special? In the past, gaming companies won against cheat providers because of copyright law: the cheat companies were not sued because of the cheats and their effects, but because the cheat programmers tampered with a game’s code to create a cheat code. In doing so, they violated copyright law.
Gaming companies could only sue cheaters via this detour.
But Bungie’s current trial was the first to specifically focus on cheating and was decided by a jury for the first time, where the issue was damages for the studio’s expenses.
Jury rules in Bungie’s favor
The jury decided: A jury of seven awarded Bungie $63,210 in damages.
The cheat company has announced that it will appeal the lawsuit.
Even though the verdict for the cheating company is relatively lenient and the fine is manageable, the trade press now sees this decision as groundbreaking and believes that it will be easier to take legal action against cheat providers in the future.
Bungie had already robbed AimJunkies of $4.3 million
The $63,000 currently won pales in comparison to the $4.3 million Bungie won from AimJunkies in February 2023: The millions of US dollars were awarded because of precisely these copyright infringements.
In recent years, Bungie has started a legal movement to specifically sue people who harm the game and its employees in any way. In addition to cheat providers, Bungie has also successfully sued people: Destiny 2 wins $400,000 lawsuit against man who threatened employees – expert explains why this is so important