Bungie already messed with several cheat manufacturers via litigation in 2023. They now have to pay the developers several million dollars
Cheaters in multiplayer games are not only a nuisance for all players, but usually also for the developers of the affected title. They then have to invest a lot of resources in countermeasures and face the criticism of the community.
Shooter developer Bungie has been trying to get to the root of the problem for some time, suing various companies that produce cheats for Destiny 2 . Some of these lawsuits are paying off in 2023.
Courts rule in favor of Bungie
Bungie itself does not report this success in court, instead it is a writer from the (Gaming Newsletter of Axios) who shares a document from the lawsuit on Twitter. According to it, the cheat maker was ordered to pay 6.7 million dollars in absentia. This is because the company had never responded to Bungie”s lawsuit.
NEWS: Bungie wins another cheating lawsuit: a $6.7 million award against Lavicheats, which it sued in 2021
Defendant never responded to the suit. Was a default judgment
Bungie said the cheats had been downloaded more than 1700 times, says it spent $2m battling cheat-makers pic.twitter.com/m6nIkzjPZ4
– Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) May 8, 2023
A large part of this sum results from violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
, a U.S. law that allows for the legal prosecution of copyright infringement on the Internet. It is unclear why the cheat manufacturer did not respond to the lawsuit. It is possible that the company, which is probably based in India, hopes to avoid paying the fine.
Stephen Totilo adds in his tweet that Bungie made other interesting statements in the proceedings: for example, the cheats of the sued manufacturer had been downloaded over 1,700 times. The Destiny developer had also spent about $2 million in the fight against cheat makers.
Not the only success in court
Even before, Bungie had been proven right in cases against other companies. At the end of April (TheGamePost) reported that a Romanian company was ordered to pay as much as 12 million dollars . Again, this was about cheats for Destiny 2.
And also in February 2023, a court ruled in favor of Bungie: After a bitter setback, a manufacturer of Aimbots for Destiny 2 was ordered to pay about 4.3 million. However, he had actively defended himself and (even responded with his own accusations), which was unsuccessful in the end.
Do you think that Bungie will succeed with his fight against cheaters and cheat manufacturers in the end? Or do you think it will remain an eternal arms race and a fight against windmills? And have you already encountered cheaters in Destiny 2 or other games, or have you been spared so far? Feel free to write it in the comments!
