Bungie Has Won $4.3 Million In Mediation Against Cheat Supplier

Cheating is a common theme in popular online games like Fortnite and Dota 2. Destiny 2 creator Bungie probably knows the best about cheating as it is a common theme in the FPS title. Regarding this topic, the company sued cheat-maker AimJunkies.com back in 2021 for infringement of copyright and other offenses.

This arbitration lasted for two years, with a lot of twists and turns during the process. However, the result has finally come out and Bungie has registered a triumphant victory and won $4.3 million in damages. DMCA violations relating to the software licensing agreement account for $3.6 million of this money, with legal expenses making up the other $700k.

Since 2021, this legal battle has been raging between Bungie, AimJunkies.com, and Phoenix Digital Group the owner of the website. Basically, the website in question creates aimbots for games like Destiny 2 and similar titles. When the legalities first started, AimJunkies argued that cheating isn’t breaking the law and the copyrights were registered after the cheats were supplied.

Initially, courts sided with the cheat-creating website, with a judge dismissing some of Bungie’s claims. According to him, there was not enough evidence to suggest any infringement of copyrights. However, the company refiled the lawsuit last May, with the judge referring the complaints to arbitration.

The defendant tried to take a more head-on approach this time, saying Bungie violated its copyright for the cheat code. But, this eventually didn’t come to anything as AimJunkies was at fault. Documents discovered by Torrent Freak tell us the website was responsible for the infringement of copyright.

According to the documents, one of the cheat manufacturers reverse-engineered the game code. Hence, they were able to make and sell aimbots because of this but forgot to check the legal books. The software licensing agreement at the start of Destiny 2 is in place to prevent such a situation, and this act violated it.

So, it turns out that AimJunkies and a third-party developer infringed these protections measure, violating the DMCA. The website’s non-cooperative behavior also did not help its case. Phoenix Digital group deleted records of the cheat software and AimJunkines’ owner lied about selling the site.

Circumventing the protection measure only resulted in a $255k fine, however. It was selling and shipping 1361 copies of cheats that resulted in $3.4 million worth of damages, due to breaking Bungie’s copyright protection. AimJunkies also had to pay the legal fees for the 2-year arbitration, adding $700k further to Bungie’s prize.

Even though the original judge did not think the website violated Bungie’s copyright, the new judge believed that it was against Washington’s consumer protection laws. Meaning cheats gave players an unfair advantage and the website selling them broke some laws. Hence, Bungie won this case in the end due to an amalgamation of these factors and walked away with over $4 million.