After a long back and forth, Destiny 2 developer studio “Bungie” wins the legal battle against several cheat developers. The fine amounts to over 3 million dollars.
Already in early 2022, Destiny 2 developers “Bungie” sued several cheat sellers and cheat developers. After a long back and forth, it has now been announced that the developer studio has won the lawsuit. A multi-million dollar fine awaits the defendants.
$4.3m fine for selling cheats
2022Bungie sued cheat developers “Phoenix Digital”, as well as cheat sellers “AimJunkies”.
The defendants were charged with copyright infringement, which translates roughly as:
Defendants are infringing Bungie”s copyrights and trademarks, circumventing technical measures that protect access to Destiny 2, and violating and inducing other players to violate Bungie”s limited software license agreement
On February 21, the Destiny news account “Destiny Bulletin” announced the developer studio”s victory via Twitter:
NEWS: Bungie has won a $4.3 million award against a Destiny2 cheat seller AimJunkies in arbitration. ($3.6m in damages and $738k in fees) pic.twitter.com/SWkkRn2ZOi
– Destiny Bulletin (@DestinyBulletn) February 20, 2023
Bungie will receive a sum of $4.3 million for the damages incurred, according to the tweet.
In the run-up, however, the defendants still tried to defend themselves with a countersuit.
Failed countersuit by cheat developers
Aim Junkies and Phoenix Digital previously tried to avert a conviction by filing a countersuit.
They argued that Bungie had accessed their PCs without permission. Funnily enough, this is a similar reasoning to that of the developer studio in the original lawsuit.
In their countersuit, the cheat developers referred to Bungie”s terms of service at the time, which do not allow the developer to access the computers of suspected hackers.
In the end, the counterclaim failed and actually led to more success for Bungie.
“Next up, the buyers!”
On Twitter, Bungie”s victory is being celebrated. After the lawsuit in May 2022 failed for the time being due to a lack of evidence, players are now especially happy about the news.
Many find it laudable that the Destiny 2 developers are finally actively pursuing the cheating problem.
Some even demand that the buyers of the cheats should be prosecuted next.
Honestly go after the buyers next.
– Gothalion (@Gothalion) February 21, 2023
Others argue that it would be enough to ban the accounts of the players who used the cheats.
going after them should just be banning, they didn”t profit from it monetarily so it”d just be a big company bullying individuals
– buppy glaive bingle (@dysfunctionpup) February 21, 2023
Is it realistic for cheat users to be sued?
The distribution and development of cheats clearly violates the copyrights of the respective developer studio.
In the case of private use of the software, however, it is somewhat more difficult to decide whether a user can actually be prosecuted.
In 2021, for example, a 14-year-old was in litigation against Epic Games for uploading video material of various cheat software to YouTube.
The defendant or his mother argued that he had not programmed the software and was only acting as a scapegoat for Epic Games.
Unfortunately, to protect the underage defendant, the final verdict was not announced.
In the case of Destiny 2, however, it is relatively unlikely that players who used cheats will actually be charged. More realistic, however, would be a ban of accounts that can be found to have used cheat software.
