In March 2022, there was much concern in the Destiny 2 community. Unjustified copyright strikes threatened the existence of numerous YouTubers and damaged Bungie’s reputation. But it quickly became clear that a scammer was at work here. Now Bungie has revealed the suspect’s name – and sued him for a fat sum.
The most important points summarized:
Destiny 2 suffers “almost incalculable damage” on YouTube – Now Bungie is suing the scammers
YouTuber probably wanted revenge for deletion from his own channel
Who is the alleged culprit? The culprit is the YouTuber Nicholas ‘Lord Nazo’ Minor, who wanted “revenge” on the developer of Destiny 2 and wildly denounced videos on YouTube – at times with success.
He is said to have pretended to be two CSC employees with fake email addresses. This is a copyright protection company working on behalf of Bungie to protect their intellectual property (like the ‘Destiny’ brand). So ‘disguised’ he was able to harm other YouTubers on Bungie’s behalf.
Former friends of Nazu also revealed that he explained exactly what he does on Discord. He complained about how easy it was to spam fake takedown notifications.
In this Destiny 2 video, you can go behind the scenes and meet some of the developers at Bungie:
Destiny 2: Season of the Haunted Developer Insights
What are the alleged motives? As Bungie explains in the lawsuit, Lord Nazo’s motive is “vengeance.” The documents describe the situation as follows:
Lord Nazo had previously uploaded Destiny 2 music to his channel, which was then hit by a wave of DMCA takedowns as Bungie and CSC took action against some Lord Nazo channels.
As journalist Paul Tassi writes, this decision was very controversial in the community at the time, but in most cases the videos could be deleted without further consequences. But Nazo refused to take down his video and finally YouTube deleted it for him.
He then uploaded new music from The Witch Queen to his YouTube channel, prompting Bungie and CSC to respond again. After a total of 23 violations, his channel was finally deleted entirely.
With its own existence being endangered, YouTube wanted revenge. By pretending to do such ads for Bungie, he was able to force a combined 96 copyright strikes on other YouTubers and even Bungie.
This was possible because YouTube allows anyone to file complaints like this. It is not necessary to prove that the complainant is actually the owner.
But Lord Nazo went a step further, according to documents: he wanted to use this chaos to make it appear as if his takedowns were also part of this wave of unjustified cheating. He was so hopeful that his channel would come back online. In a lengthy appeal to YouTube, he spoke about the situation he himself orchestrated. His channel has not been restored.
What are the consequences? Bungie was arguably able to identify Lord Nazo by, among other things, matching his YouTube and reddit accounts to his real real name and IP addresses, which created the fake email addresses. According to Tassi, his name also appears in a database of well-known cheaters.
Bungie is now suing Lord Nazo for damages. We’re talking about $4.7 million. They cite both legal fees and damage to Bungie’s reputation because for a while everyone believed the copyright strikes against the community were theirs.
However, it may be a long time before this court process is over. What will happen until then is still open. Bungie recently won another lawsuit:
Destiny 2 wins million-dollar lawsuit against cheat providers – Gets 1,900 euros for each cheater