Two years ago, Bungie filed a lawsuit against AimJunkies, the latter of which is a storefront that sells cheats and mods that allow players advantages in online games. One of the games they sold cheat packages for was Destiny 2, which is why Bungie embroiled themselves in a legal battle. The most recent update to the case, last year, saw the US District Court Judge side with AimJunkies, after Bungie claimed that the cheats infringed upon copyrights or the DMCA, to which the judge disagreed and sent the case to arbitration.

After providing further evidence, it was revealed that AimJunkies "used reverse engineering tools" on Destiny 2 to make their cheats, and that they were selling reverse-engineered code that was obtained "maliciously" after many attempted bans in-game. The company also went out of its way to conceal how much money they were making from the cheat selling, and lied about other evidence. Following this, Bungie was awarded $4.3 million dolllars in attorney fees and damages

This claim requires proof of the "intentional destruction of evidence."15 Spoliation is willful if the party acted in bad faith or conscious disregard of the importance of the evidence. 16 Spoliation is considered to have been done in bad faith if the party has "some notice that the documents were potentially relevant to the litigation before they were destroyed."17 In fashioning an appropriate sanction, courts consider: "(1) the potential importance or relevance of the missing evidence; and (2) the culpability or fault of the adverse party."1

There can be no serious doubt that Phoenix and its members engaged in spoliation by their actions after receipt of the November 4, 2022, cease and desist letter from Bungie. Specifically, they lied in response to the letter, failed to preserve many of the financial records concerning sales of the cheats, and either deleted records concerning the Aimjunkies website or failed to stop the automatic deletion of those records. None of this was done innocently.

Bungie has also just entered a new lawsuit against LaviCheats, for similar reasons, and is seeking $6.7 million from that case.

Source

 

[NoobletCheese]

Sure, I don't think this did violate the DMCA. But the prosecution said it did and the judge believed them.

Ok I think I understand your position now (please correct me if I'm wrong):

1. The defendant didn't enable circumvention of DRM
2. Anything which enables circumvention of DRM should be a crime

 

[MikaDubbz]

I have so many thoughts on these kinds of issues. Like first of all, fuck cheaters in multiplayer games, especially online.

However, it is ultimately just a video game, should anyone really be losing millions of dollars because they tore apart your code, learned how it works, and then changed how it works for others?

The argument of course ultimately is, are people leaving the game in large quantities because cheaters online have ruined the experience, thereby hurting sales and income for Bungie? If the numbers are strong enough, then OK, I guess I get it, but I dunno, it still all ultimately just rubs me the wrong way. And do we even have those numbers?

 

[CoryPugh]

Why is it impossible to enable infinite ammunition in shooting games? That would seem to be the most widely used hack, and it would be simple for developers to implement.