Destiny 2 cheat maker owes Bungie $4.4M after judge rules it violated the DMCA

pcgamer.com:

Bungie has won a $4.4 million arbitration award against AimJunkies after a judge found that the cheat maker violated the DMCA by bypassing Destiny 2's protections and reverse-engineering the game in order to develop cheats which it then sold to players.

Bungie unleashed the lawyers against multiple Destiny 2 cheat makers beginning in 2020, including PerfectAim(opens in new tab), GatorCheats(opens in new tab), and Ring-1(opens in new tab). But it ran into a snag against AimJunkies in May 2022 when a judge dismissed the copyright infringement portion(opens in new tab) of Bungie's claim: AimJunkies argued that its software was an original creation and so does not constitute an «unauthorized copy,» and the judge in the matter ruled that Bungie had failed to demonstrate otherwise.

The judge in the case gave Bungie leave to re-file the complaint with additional evidence to bolster its claim, however, and also determined that other, separate claims, including trademark infringement and DMCA violations, were sufficient to proceed. The bulk of those claims—everything excluding the copyright, trademark, and «false designation of origin» allegations—were referred to arbitration, as agreed by both AimJunkies and Bungie.

Following a hearing in December 2022, the arbitration process has now concluded with a big win for Bungie. In the ruling(opens in new tab) (via TorrentFreak(opens in new tab)), judge Ronald E. Cox found in favor of Bungie on all the stated claims: That AimJunkies violated the DMCA by making its cheat software and then selling it to the public, breached its contract with Bungie by violating the terms of service, committed «tortious interference» by messing with Bungie's business, violated the state of Washington's