Bungie has taken the fight against Destiny 2 cheaters and cheat sellers, all the way to the court. The company just beat AimJunkies in arbitration, while they are starting a new lawsuit vs LaviCheats.
AimJunkies is a commercial enterprise ran by a company called Phoenix Digital. They have sold themselves to the public as a legitimate business, selling cheats for players of PC games, not just Destiny 2.
As reported by Torrentfreak, the timeline for Bungie’s case vs AimJunkies began in 2021. Bungie then claimed that AimJunkies committed copyright and trademark infringement.
On May 2022, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Zilly dismissed Bungie’s claims. Judge Zilly pointed out that Bungie’s complaint did not have sufficient evidence to prove that any IP infringement happened.
However, Bungie was allowed to amend this complaint, and this case is still ongoing, with the trial set for later in 2023.
Bungie also made other complaints outside of IP infringement. The key complaint here is that AimJunkies’ cheats violated the anti-circumvention provision of Destiny 2’s DMCA. Furthermore, this DMCA violating cheats were sold illegally.
As this part of the case went through arbitration, it won’t be part of the case coming later. This time, artbitration judge Ronald Cox sided with Bungie, who were awarded $ 4.3 million in damages and fees. Judge Cox found that AimJunkies’ developer James May himself broke the DMCA by reverse engineering Destiny 2’s tools for the purpose of making cheats. May also came up with more ways to bypass and circumvent Bungie after he was banned several times over.
Because the cheats broke DMCA, selling the cheats was also against the law. While May was primarily held liable for the first charge, the courts struck down AimJunkies’ parent company Phoenix Digital with this one.
Bungie has now asked the federal court to accept this ruling, and subsequently approve an injunction to keep AimJunkies from continuing to sell cheats.
As reported by Destiny Bulletin, Bungie is now going after LaviCheats, another company in the business of selling Destiny 2 cheats. Bungie is seeking $ 2,000 for each unit of 2,790 cheat software that LaviCheats sold. Bringing other charges together, Bungie is seeking a total of $ 6.7 million. In the details of their complaint, Bungie remarked on LaviCheats owner Kunal Bansal refusing to cooperate in the case, warranting the high fees they are asking from the courts.
Destiny 2 players themselves welcome these suits, as cheaters keep the game from being an even playing field. But these players also believe ten other cheat companies will sprout up when these are taken down.
Bungie seems to want to replicate Nintendo’s success in making selling such cheats as unpleasant and unprofitable a venture as possible. While cheaters may never completely go away, there is definitely a difference between a game swimming in cheats, versus one where cheaters are quickly dealt with, so much so that most players never meet one online.
