Bungie has been awarded $4.3 million following a lawsuit against a prominent Destiny 2 cheat maker, signaling the company's first major legal victory in this context. The creator of Marathon, Halo, and Destiny has had plenty of problems with cheating over the years, to the point where its endgame-tier competitive multiplayer modes were often beset with cheaters attempting to easily earn high-end rewards.Most notably, Destiny 2 cheaters entered Raid race events in the past, attempting to make a name for themselves in the game's most prestigious competitive content. These attempts don't appear to have been successful so far, but the notion of there being widespread cheating seems to have rubbed Bungie the wrong way, sending the company off on a bit of a crusade against cheaters in the court of law.According to a prominent Destiny 2 news tracking Twitter account, Destiny Bulletin, Bungie has won a $4.3 million award following its litigation against cheat maker AimJunkies. While the legal struggle was anything but straightforward, AimJunkies was eventually hit with a hefty fine of $3.6 million, plus an additional sum of $738K in fees. Being one of the most prominent cheat providers for a variety of popular titles, AimJunkies was one of the first companies that Bungie went after, and it appears that its legal gambit has finally paid off.
It's worth highlighting the fact that Bungie's claims against AimJunkies got dismissed at first, with the cheat maker successfully arguing that its application wasn't an example of copyright and trademark infringement. Instead, AimJunkies' lawyer said that Bungie didn't have a case on the provided basis, as the hacks players used were fully original and didn't rely on any official Destiny 2 code to function.
The story continued later that year, when AimJunkies issued subpoenas to Valve, PayPal, and Google to show how its cheats did not, in fact, infringe upon Bungie's own copyrighted material and instead behaved more like Valve's Steam Overlay interface. This appeal, however, did not pan out for AimJunkies, as the judge saw no merit in this course of argumentation, which led to its dismissal.
Bungie explained why it's going after cheaters late last year. Bungie's general counsel, Don McGowan, said that the company wanted to bolster its community of players and get rid of malicious, unfair elements plaguing it. Being litigious about it for a long enough period of time seems to have been successful in this regard, and with AimJunkies now seemingly out of the picture, Bungie's legal team is sure to be even more hawkish on this front.
Destiny 2 is now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.