Bungie has now won its lawsuit against Destiny 2 cheat sellers AimJunkies / Phoenix Digital, though the victory isn’t a huge deal.
Earlier this week, the trial between Bungie and cheat seller AimJunkies began, and as Stephen Totilo reports, Destiny 2 developer AimJunkies won the case. This is a landmark case, as it may be the first time a US jury has reached a verdict in a game cheating case. The result resulted in Bungie being awarded a paltry (by any means) $63,210 in damages, which is obviously not a huge sum of money, but it is exactly the amount of money Bungie lost due to cheat sales.
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It’s worth noting that in most cases cheat sellers/creators back down when developers put legal pressure on them, as going up against a big company obviously comes with a huge financial risk, but as Totilo at Game File reports, AimJunkie/Phoenix Digital has actually filed a countersuit against Bungie, where they claim that the developer gained unauthorized access to the computer of James May, the man who allegedly infringed Bungie’s copyrights. [then] accessed one or more copyrighted works on his or her personal computer.”
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It’s also important to note that cheating in games isn’t actually illegal, though it’s obviously frowned upon and often violates a game’s terms of service, but the big issue here is that Bungie believes AimJunkies/Phoenix Digital is infringing Bungie’s copyright. As Totilo points out, this ruling in favor of Bungie means there’s now a ruling “in favor of game companies’ frequent claims that such cheats infringe copyright,” which could be used in similar court cases in the future.
I’m not entirely in favor of cheating, especially when the cheater is just profiting off of people who just want an easy win, although it’s obviously concerning when a major company wins a court case over copyright. But you really shouldn’t cheat, it’s annoying.
