Bungie’s Destiny 2 cheating lawsuit will be decided by jury trial this week

polygon.com:

The jury trial between Destiny 2 developer Bungie and cheating software creator and distributor AimJunkies began Monday, nearly three years after the lawsuit was filed by Bungie lead attorney Jacob Dini in a Seattle court. It’s been a long, complicated journey to this point: AimJunkies, owned by Phoenix Digital Group, countersued Bungie in 2022 claiming the Sony-owned company illegally accessed James May’s computer and accessed his copyrighted material. Then, in 2023, parts of the lawsuit — anti-circumvention and trafficking violations — were resolved in arbitration, with Bungie winning $4.3 million. Months later, AimJunkies filed to appeal the decision, arguing that the arbitrator “blatantly disregarded some rules in making his decision.” That appeal is ongoing. This week, Bungie and AimJunkies are in court to settle the claim that AimJunkies violated Bungie’s copyright.

Opening statements began Monday after eight jurors were selected. It’s likely the first time a video game cheating lawsuit has made it this far in the court system, according to lawyers who spoke to Game File. The thing is, cheating isn’t explicitly against United States law. The arbiter determined that AimJunkies violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention rules by bypassing Bungie’s security measures and by trafficking — or selling — software designed to circumvent those measures. Now, Bungie is looking to prove AimJunkies violated copyright law, too.

Bungie’s lawyers are blaming one of the defendants, James May, for allegedly hacking into Destiny 2 to copy its code to create the cheating software sold by AimJunkies, according to court documents. Bungie said May split the revenue with Phoenix Digital’s Jeffrey Conway and Jordan Green. Bungie reportedly found records that Phoenix Digital paid May “more than $700,000 for his work,” according to Bungie lawyer William C. Rava during the opening statement, as reported by Law360. But the sales records provided by Phoenix Digital