Yesterday’s jury resolution awarded Bungie (PDF) a tidy sum of $63,210. Bungie counsel James Barker mentioned in a press release emailed to The Verge that the corporate is “dedicated to our gamers and can proceed to guard them in opposition to cheats, together with taking this and future instances all the way in which to trial.”
In 2021, Bungie sued AimJunkies and 4 defendants (right here’s a PDF of the criticism), alleging, amongst different issues, that they hacked Future 2 to repeat the code used to make cheats. A few of Bungie’s complaints — like that AimJunkies violated a DMCA provision forbidding circumvention of copyright safety tech — went to arbitration and noticed Bungie profitable $4 million. AimJunkies appealed after the decide confirmed that award. That enchantment continues to be in course of, as Polygon wrote this week.
Phoenix Digital founder David Schaefer will transfer to dismiss the jury’s verdict and enchantment it if crucial, in line with Totilo. Nonetheless that shakes out, the decision is critical, provided that dishonest lawsuits are likely to conclude in different methods, like settlements. (For instance, a decide shut down a Grand Theft Auto cheat distributor in 2018 following a Take-Two Interactive lawsuit, or when Bungie settled one other dishonest lawsuit in 2022 for $13.5 million.)
The win might solely imply pocket change for Bungie, and it gained’t seemingly put an finish to on-line dishonest, however it does put a jury on report in regards to the legality of making such cheats. That makes this extra vital than the pocket-change-for-Bungie $63,000 award lets on.