By: Hayden McGuire
Over two years ago, the major game developer, Bungie, filed suit against Aimjunkies.com, requesting damages and injunctive relief, stopping Aimjunkies.com from selling cheats for Bungie’s popular game Destiny 2. Destiny 2 is a free-to-play online first-person-shooter that was released in 2017. It has maintained between 100,000 and 300,000 concurrent players since then, with peaks nearing 500,000. The cheats, developed and sold by Aimjunkies.com, allowed players to see their enemies through walls, automatically aim and fire with one button, and a variety of other special powers. These types of advantages destroyed the experience for the players on the receiving end and often resulted in them quitting the game.
After the initial filing, there was a year-long, somewhat messy arbitration process for many of the claims. One issue not sent to arbitration was copyright infringement. At first, Bungie failed to successfully plead its copyright infringement claim, but its amended complaint made clear the impact that these exploits had on the consumers and Bungie itself. In one clear statement in their complaint, they wrote, “[c]heaters ruin the experience of playing Destiny 2. Not only do cheaters impair the enjoyment of gameplay by non-cheaters with whom they interact in-game; cheaters illegitimately obtain and thereby devalue the in-game requires that the non-cheating players obtain legitimately.” The filing from Bungie goes on to further highlight the “substantial time and money” Bungie has needed to invest into combating cheat developers.
The key to Bungie’s copyright claim was a showing that the defendants reverse-engineered the code in Destiny 2, created derivatives, and attached those derivatives to all copies of the cheats they sold – violating Bungie’s copyright on the underlying material. This practice went against the Limited Software License Agreement all consumers who download Destiny 2 must agree to. Judge Zilly accepted this as a strong showing to grant the initial preliminary injunction and referred all surviving non-copyright claims to arbitration, which led to Bungie’s eventual relief.
Recently, that arbitration was confirmed in Federal District Court. On February 12, 2023, Bungie was granted permanent injunctive relief, damages, and legal fees in the amount of $4.4 million dollars. Still, Aimjunkies.com and other liable parties have pursued counterclaims that have survived motions to dismiss. There is now a trial for the remaining copyright infringement claims scheduled for this year.
Game developers suing the creators of cheats is not new. During the arbitration with Aimjunkies.com, Bungie itself sued Elite Boss Tech for their cheats resulting in a $13.5 million dollar settlement from that dispute. Now, in the weeks after the victory against Aimjunkies.com, they are pursuing LaviCheats for $6.7 million dollars — $2000 for each of the 2,790 downloaded copies – along with other cheat developers.
Bungie’s recent pursuit of Destiny 2’s cheat developers, coincides with the release of Lightfall, a substantial update for Destiny 2. Because the game is free-to-play, these packages are bought by some consumers who already play the game to get access to the new content. These updates bring consistently huge player spikes – Lightfall had over 300,000 on its release day – which also brings more cheaters and public outrage about them.
Copyright infringement is a key tool for developers of online games in creating a fair environment for all the players. Without perceiving the game as fair, players will likely not enjoy the experience and stop playing, causing damage to the game developer and, at least in the short term, the players subjected to cheaters. This can be particularly problematic in free-to-play games and e-sports.
Cheating in video games is not new, but its presence appears to be high and increasing. One game from the Call of Duty franchise was reportedly seeing people cheating in every single online match. Additionally, the exploits identified in that instance allowed the cheaters to obtain information like the IP addresses of their opponents. These types of realities show a danger of more than just angry consumers, but a genuine personal security risk. This caused some members from the player base to create their own copy of the game that solved the security mistakes, and open-source on GitHub. But much like the cheat developers’ actions, this exposes the creative players to risk liability for the fix.
Thankfully, Bungie, along with many other game developers, appears to be taking a more successful litigious stance against cheat developers. Hopefully, it will continue to be an effective method of combating the distribution of cheats for online games. Still, consumers should be given leeway to create and innovate with existing games as long as the game’s developer and players are not harmed.
Student Bio: Hayden McGuire is a 2L at Suffolk University Law School and a staffer for the Journal of High Technology Law. He received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, from Suffolk University.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHTL or Suffolk University Law School.
