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Bellevue, Wash.-based video game developer Bungie won $6.7 million in a lawsuit against a company that sold cheat programs for its flagship title, Destiny 2.
The lawsuit, originally filed in 2021 in federal court in Seattle, names India-based Kunal Bansal as the operator of Lavicheats, a company that markets subscription-based hacks for a variety of multiplayer video games.
Bungie’s suit against Bansal alleged that the hacks available via Lavicheats represent various copyright and trademark violations, including violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Washington State Consumer Protection Act. Bansal failed to respond to the claims.
The court approved Bungie’s motion for default judgment on May 8, in all but two claims. It also entered a permanent injunction against Bansal on the majority of the terms Bungie requested.
GeekWire reached out to Bungie for further comment.
Bungie, which sold to Sony for $2.6 billion last year, has been aggressive in its pursuit of third-party cheat sellers. Bungie won suits this year against AimJunkies and VeteranCheats, with courts awarding $4.3 million and $12 million respectively in damages to Bungie.
The use of these hacks is a violation of most games’ terms of service, and players caught using them may get their accounts suspended or banned. In the meantime, however, they’ve likely ruined the game experience for at least one other player. It’s an endemic problem in online gaming, particularly on the PC platform.
The AimJunkies suit found that James May, a developer for AimJunkies, had violated Bungie’s copyright via using reverse engineering tools to create hacks for Destiny 2. That, in turn, was a violation of the terms of service that May had agreed to in order to install and launch Destiny 2 in the first place, which had resulted in May getting his accounts banned on multiple occasions.
The sorts of hacks that Lavicheats sells are meant to provide their users with an undetectable, competitive advantage in head-to-head multiplayer modes, according to its website. Features of the various hacks offered by Lavicheats include an “ESP” mode that detects and flags other players, so the user of the hack can’t be ambushed or surprised, and an “aimbot” that allows for incredibly accurate auto-targeting.
Effectively, it’s a third-party pay-to-win option for player-vs.-player games like Destiny 2‘s Crucible.
While Lavicheats doesn’t offer Destiny 2 cheats at time of writing, it still sells hacks for other popular titles, including Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Vanguard, Escape from Tarkov, and Sea of Thieves.
Read the full court order below.
Bungie wins $6.7M in lawsuit against video game cheat-maker by GeekWire on Scribd
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