Yahoo Finance Bungie wins $4.3 million in case against 'Destiny 2' cheat provider AimJunkies
But their legal battle is still far from over.
Bungie has been embroiled in a legal battle with cheat provider AimJunkies since 2021, with both sides slapping the other with lawsuits. Now, the game developer has walked away with $4.3 million in damages and fees after a victory in an arbitration proceeding, according to TorrentFreak. Bungie first sued AirmJunkies in 2021, accusing it of copyright and trademark infringement for hosting "Destiny 2 Hacks" on its website.
US District Court Judge Thomas Zilly ruled mostly in favor of AimJunkies last year, deciding that Bungie had failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove its claim. However, he gave Bungie the chance to present more evidence. That copyright infringement lawsuit is still headed to trial, but Zilly apparently referred the non-copyright-related aspects of the case to arbitration.
TorrentFreak says arbitration Judge Ronald Cox has decided that AimJunkies and "Destiny 2 Hacks" developer James May violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Cox based his decision on May's previous testimonies that he connected reverse engineering tools to the game in order to create cheats for it. May also said that Bungie caught and banned him several times for doing so, but that he looked for methods to circumvent the bans.
Since AimJunkies sold and profited from May's creation, the judge found it liable. Cox also found AimJunkies and its parent company Phoenix Digital Group liable for selling not just game cheats, but also the loader used to inject cheats into games. Based on evidence presented, AimJunkies sold over 1,000 copies of the cheats and over 1,000 copies of the cheat loader. In addition to the evidence and May's statements, one other reason why Cox sided with Bungie was because AimJunkies owner David Shaefer underreported the website's cheat sales. "Given respondents' egregious and willful conduct, including their ongoing concealment of sales, Bungie is entitled to the full statutory damages available," he wrote in his decision.
As a result, Bungie was awarded $3.65 million for all DMCA-related violations and an additional $700,000 for fees and other costs. According to TorrentFreak, Bungie will use this victory as part of its argument in AimJunkies' countersuit in which it accused the developer of violating its ToS for reverse-engineering its cheat software. AimJunkies also previously claimed that Bungie illegally hacked May's computer, but the court dismissed that complaint last year.
