Yesterday’s jury verdict awarded Bungie (PDF) a generous $63,210. Bungie attorney James Barker said in a statement emailed to edge The company is “committed to our players and will continue to protect them from cheating, including taking this and future cases all the way to trial.”
In 2021, Bungie sued AimJunkies and four defendants (here’s a PDF of the indictment), accusing them, among other things, of hacking Destiny 2 Copy the code used to create the cheat. Some of Bungie’s complaints (such as AimJunkies’ violation of DMCA clauses prohibiting the circumvention of copyright protection technology) went to arbitration, and Bungie eventually won $4 million. After the judge affirmed the ruling, AimJunkies appealed. The appeal is still pending because polygon Written this week.
Phoenix Digital founder David Schaefer will reject the jury’s verdict and appeal if necessary, according to Totilo. Regardless of the final outcome, the ruling is significant given that cheating lawsuits often end in settlements or other means. (For example, the judge closed Grand Theft Auto Cheat resellers after Take-Two Interactive filed a lawsuit in 2018, or Bungie settled another cheating lawsuit in 2022 for $13.5 million.
This win may only mean loose change for Bungie, and it’s unlikely to end online cheating, but it does put the jury’s record on the legality of creating such cheats. That makes the award more significant than the $63,000 bonus Bungie represented.
