It’s a win for Bungie, the developers behind Destiny 2, which is nearing its end with the final DLC being nearing its release date called The Final Shape. The win in question is a lawsuit against cheat sellers for the game.
What are the “Cheats” in question?
AimJunkies used to provide a number of cheats both for PvP and PvE, one of which was allowing the cheaters to see through walls, aimbots which help cheaters snap on to players in public matches etc. the usual tactics cheaters use to fool themselves into thinking they can actually play anything that requires even a modicum of skill.
These kinds of cheats make any competitive or public matches completely one-sided and are so powerful most of the time there is no way to counter the cheat through the game’s means (gadgets, counter weapons etc). It affects genuine competitive players the most, players then often leave the game as they may see it as the only way counter cheaters but this also poses a risk to these players as they face ban for a certain period of time.
This makes dealing with cheaters all the more frustrating and demotivating for those wanting to climb the ranks and need to gain the necessary points to do so. Recently we have also seen hackers interrupt a LAN tournament (Apex Legends) by quite literally adding cheats to legit competitive players.
Bungie’s Crusade (it’s the good kind)
Bungie has actually been suing cheat sellers for a while now, with three cheat sellers successfully sued and was awarded millions against these sellers back in 2023. Bungie sued Aimjunkies again for money earned through its sale of cheats which led to Bungie being awarded with approximately $60,000.
The “copyright violations” is due to the argument made through the use of the see-through-walls cheat which is only possible if normally inaccessible information is somehow acquired by the cheat maker which makes it a breach of copyright laws.
Previously Bungie and Ubisoft teamed together to take on Ring-1 another cheat seller for the same reason of copyright violations but the court rejected Bungie and Ubisoft’s demand of a $2.2 million dollars from the UK based cheat seller. Despite this lawsuit, Ring-1 still operates as of now selling cheats for various competitive games.
In 2021, Bungie went after LaviCheats a company based in India with Digital Millennium Copyright Act(DMCA) strikes along with Aimjunkies and VeteranCheats where LaviCheats failed to respond to the claims but Bungie was awarded $4.3 million and $12 million respectively from the former mentioned.
A Precedent Set
Now this approximate $60,000 isn’t much for Bungie but what this does do is set a precedent for the future as developers can now more assuredly go after cheat makers and/or cheaters for their competitive titles as a way of combat against cheating.
This will hopefully put a sizable dent in the world of cheating and discourage new would-be cheat makers from entering this godforsaken market. Players from other competitive titles like Call of Duty, Apex Legends should encourage their parent companies or the developers of the games to also sue for Copyright Violations to make this dent into a hole where these cheat makers can’t recover from.
The Conclusion
We are seeing a legal precedent set in terms of tackling this cheating problem in competitive games but on the software side there still needs to be a better solution than kernel level anti-cheats like Valorant’s Vanguard and Easy Anti-cheat.Even with the anticheat having kernel level access (more privileged than the owner of the device) cheats are still prevalent in those titles.
Numerous people have spoken on the risk associated with if and when these anticheats get compromised which could make the system it’s installed on be completely open to various kinds of attacks that steal private and sensitive information.
Another thing would be to make people more and more aware of what details to share online as hackers can use any information which may not seem significant to locate and launch attacks on unsuspecting individuals.
