Bungie wins its Destiny 2 cheat maker court case, taking home five figure chump change while potentially setting a bad precedent

Bungie has now won its lawsuit against Destiny 2 cheat sellers AimJunkies/ Phoenix Digital, though it’s not much of a win.

Earlier this week, the trial between Bungie and cheat sellers AimJunkies began, and as reported by Stephen Totilo, it was a win for the Destiny 2 developer. This was a pretty landmark case, as it might be the first time a jury, in the US at the very least, has ruled on a game cheating case. The result has led to Bungie receiving a measly (for it, anyway) $63,210 in damages, obviously not a huge sum, but it is just the amount that Bungie will have supposedly lost due to the cheat-selling.

Important to note is that in most cases cheat sellers/ makers just give up when developers impose legal pressures on them, as going up against big companies can obviously be a huge financial risk, but as reported by Totilo at Game File, AimJunkie/ Phoenix Digital actually counter-sued Bungie, themselves alleging that the developer had accessed the person who allegedly violated Bungie’s copyright James May’s computer “without his authorization, [then] accessed one or more copyrighted works on his personal computer.”

Also important to note is how cheating in games isn’t actually illegal, though obviously frowned upon and frequently against a games terms of service, but the big issue here is that Bungie believed AimJunkies/ Phoenix Digital were infringing on Bungie’s copyright. As Totilo notes, this ruling in favour of Bungie means there is now a verdict that “supports game companies’ frequent claims that cheats like these infringe on copyright,” which is something that could be used in future court cases like these.

I’m not exactly pro-cheating, especially in cases where the makers of them are just kind of profiting off of people who just want an easy win, though there’s obviously a concern here when a big company comes out as the winner in a case about copyright issues. You really shouldn’t cheat, though, it is quite annoying.