Bungie tracks down another Destiny 2 cheat maker, hammers him for $16.2M

pcgamer.com:

It's been a heck of a week for Bungie, which has now scored its third multi-million-dollar lawsuit win against a Destiny 2 cheat maker over a span of just seven days. A week ago the studio won $12 million against VeteranCheats(opens in new tab), then on Monday it was $6.7 million against LaviCheats(opens in new tab), and now it's notched a $16.2 million triumph over Daniel Larsen, a developer whose downfall actually began a year ago, in Bungie's $13.5 million settlement with cheat maker Elite Boss Tech(opens in new tab).

(For those keeping score at home, all of the above follows a $4.4 million win over cheat mater AimJunkies(opens in new tab) in February. Bungie's on a bit of a roll.)

That settlement was reached in June 2022, but as Torrentfreak(opens in new tab) explained a few months later, that wasn't the end of it. Several of the defendants in the case had only been identified by their online handles, and Bungie apparently wanted to get its hands on everyone. Thanks to cooperation from Elite Boss Tech owner Robert James Duthie Nelson, it was able to identify two pseudonymous defendants: One, Patrick Schaufuss, responded to Bungie's attempt to make contact and agreed to cooperate in the case, but the other—Larsen—ignored the whole thing.

Bungie's action against Larsen has now ended in basically the same way that its case against LaviCheats owner Kunal Bansal wrapped up earlier this week: With a big default judgment. On May 9, the courts granted Bungie an award $16.2 million, based on:

That's actually slightly less than Bungie requested, because the court determined that the studio is entitled to statutory damages, it is not entitled to actual damages based on Larsen's alleged profits from the infringement because the