Bungie has been embroiled in a legal battle with cheating service provider AimJunkies since 2021, with both sides slapping the other with lawsuits. Now, the game developer has cleared $4.3 million in damages and fees after winning arbitration proceedings, 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 Zelle ruled mostly in favor of AimJunkies last year, deciding that Bungie had failed to provide sufficient evidence to substantiate his claim, however, giving Bungie the opportunity to present more evidence. That copyright infringement lawsuit is still on its way to trial. But Zilly appears to have referred the non-copyright aspects to arbitration.
TorrentFreak says arbitration judge Ronald Cox determined 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 attached reverse engineering tools to the game in order to cheat it. Bungie has caught and banned him several times for doing so, but has looked for ways to circumvent the ban.
Since AimJunkies was sold and benefited from May creation, the judge found him liable. Cox also found that AimJunkies and its parent company, Phoenix Digital Group, were liable for selling not only game cheats, but also the loader used to inject cheats into games. Based on the evidence presented, AimJunkies has sold more than 1,000 A copy of the cheat and over 1,000 copies of the cheat tool, in addition to the evidence and May’s statements. Another reason Cox sided with Bungie was that AimJunkies owner David Schaefer underreported the cheat website’s sales, writing in his decision: “In view of the egregious and premeditated behavior On the part of the defendants, including their continued concealment of sales, Bungie is entitled to the full legal remedies available.”
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. To reverse-engineer its cheating software, AimJunkies previously alleged that Bungie illegally hacked May’s computer, but the court dismissed that complaint last year, but their legal battle is far from over.