Bungie has been embroiled in a legal battle with cheat provider AimJunkies since 2021, with both sides slapping each other with lawsuits. Now, the game developer has walked away with $4.3 million in damages and fees after a victory in arbitration proceedings, according to torrentfreak. Bungie first sued AirmJunkies in 2021, accusing them of copyright and trademark infringement for hosting “Destiny 2 Hacks” on their website.
US District Court Judge Thomas Zilly ruled by a majority in favor of AimJunkies last year, ruling that Bungie had not provided sufficient evidence to prove its claim. However, he did give Bungie a chance to present more evidence. That copyright infringement lawsuit is still headed to trial, but Zilly apparently referred the non-copyright aspects of the case to arbitration.
torrentfreak says Arbitration Judge Ronald Cox has ruled that AimJunkies and “Destiny 2 Hacks” developer James May violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Cox based his decision on May’s earlier testimony that she reverse-engineered the game to create cheats for him. May also said that Bungie caught him and banned him multiple 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 him liable. Cox also found AimJunkies and its parent company Phoenix Digital Group responsible for selling not only game cheats, but also the loader used to inject cheats into games. Based on the evidence presented, AimJunkies sold over 1000 copies of the cheats and over 1000 copies of the cheat loader. In addition to May’s evidence and statements, another reason Cox sided with Bungie was because AimJunkies owner David Shaefer failed to report the website’s cheat sales. “Given the respondents’ willful and egregious conduct, including their continued concealment of sales, Bungie is entitled to the full amount of legal damages available,” he wrote in his decision.
As a result, Bungie was awarded $3.65 million for all DMCA-related infringements and an additional $700,000 in fees and other costs. According torrentfreak, Bungie will use this victory as part of its argument in the AimJunkies countersuit in which it accused the developer of violating its Terms of Service by reverse-engineering its cheat software. AimJunkies has also previously claimed that Bungie illegally hacked into May’s computer, but the court fired that complaint last year.
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