Recently, Bungie, the developer of the Halo and Destiny video game series, won a judgment of just over $60,000 against AimJunkies, a cheat and mod site. The lawsuit arose because AimJunkies was selling cheats for Destiny 2, a free-to-play online first-person shooter with over 10 million players. In the complaint, Bungie explained the problem with the cheat codes:
Destiny 2 rewards players for their gameplay skills with items, seals, and titles, and these rewards are visible to other players. Cheaters earn the same rewards without the requisite gameplay skill. When cheating occurs, or when there is a perception that players are cheating, then non-cheating players become frustrated that cheaters obtain the same rewards and stop playing.”
From the Complaint filed 06/15/21
The complaint was filed based on copyright and trademark infringement, breach of contract, as well as DMCA (Circumvention of Technological Measures to control copyright).
The copyright claim may sound like a bit of a stretch. A cheat code, standing alone, probably isn’t a copy of anything protectable. I would have expected the defendant to raise this issue, but it’s hard to tell what happened from the public documents. There was a motion for preliminary injunction in June of 2022. It explains that the defendant was actually creating copies of the game–or at least part of it:
to create cheat software that includes these features, Defendants necessarily copied the Destiny 2 software code that corresponds to key attributes in the Destiny 2 video game, such as the data structures for player and combatant positioning
Well, perhaps. Data structures are at the bleeding edge of copyright law. But if you find the copyright claim unconvincing, the complaint had plenty of other ammunition as well.
The defendants had downloaded Destiny 2, and therefore agreed to the terms of its end user license, which expressly prohibits the user to:
hack or modify Destiny 2, or create, develop, modify, distribute, or use any unauthorized software programs to gain advantage in any online or multiplayer game modes.
Cheating might seem harmless on face, but keep in mind that Destiny 2 is a multiplayer online game that is free to play, but charges for in-game purchases. In contrast, cheat codes in single player games don’t usually concern the game publishers as much. If you buy a mod that helps you grow cash crops faster in Stardew Valley, no one really suffers, other than perhaps your friends who envy your lush and beautiful farm. In fact, Stardew Valley, a hugely popular game, supports a wide library of cheats, which only seem to make the game more popular.
But cheats in multi-player online games like Destiny 2 can give you an advantage against other players, and that messes with the developer’s business model. In other words, the developer wants to be the only one able to sell advantages, and to control how much advantage they provide. But to be fair, for Destiny 2, there seems to be disagreement among players as to whether the legitimate in-game purchases provide you with any real advantage. Most of them are cosmetic only.
The damages awarded in this case represent the revenue AimJunkies earned from selling cheats for Destiny 2. In the world of copyright lawsuits, $60,000 is a very small award, and doubtless Bungie spent quite a bit more than that in legal fees to prosecute the lawsuit.
But the purpose of the suit was clearly to prove a point, and establish a basis for suing other cheat providers. And it turns out that Bungie is not afraid of spending legal fees. There is an excellent article in Axios about Bungie’s various legal campaigns.
The gaming world can be a dangerous place indeed. In addition to other lawsuits about cheating, Bungie has brought suits against player trolls who have made threats to the company’s employees. An article in the New York Post said that one player “allegedly threatened to burn down Bungie headquarters in Seattle. On July 4, 2022, in response to a tweet asking if anyone was willing to commit arson in Seattle in exchange for payment, [the player] replied that he was, and that the poster would receive a discount if the target was Bungie.”
And in a somewhat less disturbing, but also concerning, case, Bungie sued a fan who impersonated Bungie for the purpose of sending a spate of DMCA takedown notices–the kind that content creators send when someone is copying their content on a site like YouTube or TikTok. The notices were directed at fan-created content, but Bungie allows fan content. The fraudulent takedown notices were part of a soap opera of conflict between a disgruntled fan and the company. More info here.
Meanwhile, it’s getting more popular, and easier, to sue the cheat providers. There will probably be more lawsuits to come–from Bungie and others–as they try to shut down this kind of business.
Watch my video here.
