Activision is finally taking action against one of the biggest cheat makers of Call of Duty, by officially filing a lawsuit against them.
It’s been an unusual turn of events, as Activision did not actually know the identity of their cheat makers. We can trace the timeline courtesy of GamesRadar, who we will cite for each portion of the story below.
This story begins in January 2022, when Activision sues the website EngineOwning. EngineOwning is one of the biggest websites that makes cheats for video games, not just for Call of Duty, but all manner of games. Of course, the primary interest in video game cheats comes from players of online multiplayer shooters.
Activision’s suit also alleges that EngineOwning has plans to make cheats for another one of Activision’s online multiplayer shooters, namely, Overwatch. As of the time of this original suit, EngineOwning is one of the biggest websites to be making cheats for Call of Duty Warzone.
On September 2022, Activision made filings so that the courts would name the owners of EngineOwning. For what it’s worth, EngineOwning had good enough legal representation that they were able to keep their identities secret for all this time.
Activision’s actions have finally borne fruit now. They were able to acquire the names of the EngineOwning’s actual owners by legal action and is now suing them directly. The reason for this drastic action is to ensure that these owners would not just find legal loopholes to get out of the website’s suit. That would enable them to continue making and selling cheats under a new name and company.
This case is likely to still take a few months before Activision sees success or failure in these actions. In fact, the question of if Microsoft will acquire Activision Blizzard King might be resolved first before this case does.
But Activision is quite serious in their intent to get cheaters handled and removed from Call of Duty’s online multiplayer.
They had developed a set of anti-cheat measures, known as Ricochet, in the hopes that cheaters would be successfully discouraged from using cheats. However, even Call of Duty Modern Warfare II’s beta saw a large number of cheaters entering and playing the game.
In general, the issue of video game cheaters is serious enough that Activision has publicly floated the idea of permabans for cheating Call of Duty players. If they successfully take down cheat makers like this, that may ultimately be unnecessary.
