A assemblage recovered connected Friday that Phoenix Digital, which owns nan cheat mod tract AimJunkies, is blameworthy of violating Bungie copyrights erstwhile it created cheats for Destiny 2, reported Stephen Totilo, who has written astir Bungie’s cheating lawsuits for Axios. The landmark determination whitethorn beryllium nan first clip a assemblage has agreed that a cheat creator violated a gaming company’s copyrights.
Yesterday’s assemblage determination awarded Bungie (PDF) a tidy sum of $63,210. Bungie counsel James Barker said successful a connection emailed to The Verge that nan institution is “committed to our players and will proceed to protect them against cheats, including taking this and early cases each nan way to trial.”
In 2021, Bungie sued AimJunkies and 4 defendants (here’s a PDF of nan complaint), alleging, among different things, that they hacked Destiny 2 to transcript nan codification utilized to make cheats. Some of Bungie’s complaints — for illustration that AimJunkies violated a DMCA provision forbidding circumvention of copyright protection tech — went to arbitration and saw Bungie winning $4 million. AimJunkies appealed aft nan judge confirmed that award. That entreaty is still successful process, arsenic Polygon wrote this week.
Phoenix Digital laminitis David Schaefer will move to disregard nan jury’s verdict and entreaty it if necessary, according to Totilo. However that shakes out, nan verdict is significant, fixed that cheating lawsuits thin to reason successful different ways, for illustration settlements. (For example, a judge shut down a Grand Theft Auto cheat distributor successful 2018 pursuing a Take-Two Interactive lawsuit, aliases erstwhile Bungie settled different cheating suit successful 2022 for $13.5 million.)
The triumph whitethorn only mean pouch alteration for Bungie, and it won’t apt put an extremity to online cheating, but it does put a assemblage connected grounds astir nan legality of creating specified cheats. That makes this much important than nan pocket-change-for-Bungie $63,000 grant lets on.