Two years ago, Bungie filed a lawsuit against AimJunkies, the latter of which is a storefront that sells cheats and mods that allow players advantages in online games. One of the games they sold cheat packages for was Destiny 2, which is why Bungie embroiled themselves in a legal battle. The most recent update to the case, last year, saw the US District Court Judge side with AimJunkies, after Bungie claimed that the cheats infringed upon copyrights or the DMCA, to which the judge disagreed and sent the case to arbitration.

After providing further evidence, it was revealed that AimJunkies "used reverse engineering tools" on Destiny 2 to make their cheats, and that they were selling reverse-engineered code that was obtained "maliciously" after many attempted bans in-game. The company also went out of its way to conceal how much money they were making from the cheat selling, and lied about other evidence. Following this, Bungie was awarded $4.3 million dolllars in attorney fees and damages

This claim requires proof of the "intentional destruction of evidence."15 Spoliation is willful if the party acted in bad faith or conscious disregard of the importance of the evidence. 16 Spoliation is considered to have been done in bad faith if the party has "some notice that the documents were potentially relevant to the litigation before they were destroyed."17 In fashioning an appropriate sanction, courts consider: "(1) the potential importance or relevance of the missing evidence; and (2) the culpability or fault of the adverse party."1

There can be no serious doubt that Phoenix and its members engaged in spoliation by their actions after receipt of the November 4, 2022, cease and desist letter from Bungie. Specifically, they lied in response to the letter, failed to preserve many of the financial records concerning sales of the cheats, and either deleted records concerning the Aimjunkies website or failed to stop the automatic deletion of those records. None of this was done innocently.

Bungie has also just entered a new lawsuit against LaviCheats, for similar reasons, and is seeking $6.7 million from that case.

Source

 

[CaliousKai]

"used reverse engineering tools"

ghidra?

they were selling reverse-engineered code that was obtained "maliciously"

They didn't just ship patches to the original code?

Now if all companies did this to cheaters on games I feel that would make gaming better and more fair to players that actually want to play fair and not rely on hacks/glitches to look the best (COUGH) speedrunners aren't real gamers!

 

[NoobletCheese]

I know that feeling bro. Used to play GTAIV Free Mode and you'd have modders in there every now and then. The worst part is they would only turn their cheats on at certain critical moments to obfuscate their cheating. I mean it's one thing to cheat, but to trick people into thinking you're not cheating, is a whole nother level of skullduggery imo. It poisons the competition in a uniquely insidious way. Those people are the worst and probably have some sort of personality defect IRL. Rockstar should have done a better job with anticheat patches to weed out these miscreants.

 

[tabzer]

...The worst part is they would only turn their cheats on at certain critical moments to obfuscate their cheating. I mean it's one thing to cheat, but to trick people into thinking you're not cheating, is a whole nother level of skullduggery imo. It poisons the competition in a uniquely insidious way. Those people are the worst and probably have some sort of personality defect IRL...

Yeah, politicians are a tricky bunch.

 

[chrisrlink]

Now if all companies did this to cheaters on games I feel that would make gaming better and more fair to players that actually want to play fair and not rely on hacks/glitches to look the best (COUGH) speedrunners aren't real gamers!

Just look at Japan alittle over kill stuffing prisons (5 years min irrc) with people cheating on video games I mean this is a main point as why I changed my mind on going

 

[smf]

I still don't understand why they are calling it "damages" , which means "money that we lost". I've not yet seen any evidence of Bungie losing millions of dollars in revenue due to cheaters.

The DMCA was designed around the situation where you sell or distribute some kind of product that enables piracy & they can see you doing it but they don't have evidence of it being used & it's impossible for them to get that evidence.

Because you're a criminal selling or distributing some kind of product that enables piracy then some behavior that would normally be legitimate is treated as a proof of criminality. Which is fine, because they know you did it all on purpose in the first place, so you deserve it.

The issue here, is that this isn't (AFAIK) enabling piracy. Their defense should have realized that, realized what the DMCA says and said "hey look guys, we ought to have a proper trial and not one of these DMCA circumvention kangaroo courts"

 

[DoctorBagPhD]

Good.

I'm 100% for people cheating in single player or in private games/servers and everyone knows (used to play payday 2 with friends and once we got bored cheats made the game hilariously fun for us) but as soon as you use them to gain an advantage in a competitive game you're a massive cunt.

 

[CanIHazWarez]

Not a fan of big Companies but cheating and helping people to cheat in multiplayer games is the worst and should be punisehd strongly especially as this hurts not only the game developer and publisher but also everyone who wants to properly play the game.

There were so many games in the past which I loved but stopped playing because it wasn't any fun when every single game you played there was at least one guy cheating :/

But it isn't the Federal government's job to make sure people don't cheat in the game, it's Bungies. Even if you wanted the Feds to intervene, making software to cheat in video games isn't illegal, which is why this is supposedly a copyright case. It's abuse of copyright law, and you shouldn't cheer it on, even if you don't like the defendant.

 

[CMDreamer]

Which none of them do, hence why they are illegal.

You should get your facts right.

If none of the decompilation projects used their own source code, all of them would had been taken down already, but guess what? They're still provinding updates.

 

[Youkai]

But it isn't the Federal government's job to make sure people don't cheat in the game, it's Bungies. Even if you wanted the Feds to intervene, making software to cheat in video games isn't illegal, which is why this is supposedly a copyright case. It's abuse of copyright law, and you shouldn't cheer it on, even if you don't like the defendant.

With this kind of mindset you could also argue that murder isn't anything the Government should sue because its something between two people and has nothing to do with the Government (of course this is like comparing someone poking you with a stick to someone poking you with a sharp knive but still)

As long as it disrupts the public which it kinda does in a Game that everyone can join it is the Governments job to make sure people obey the rules as long as the rules are actually legal.

 

[NoobletCheese]

With this kind of mindset you could also argue that murder isn't anything the Government should sue because its something between two people and has nothing to do with the Government (of course this is like comparing someone poking you with a stick to someone poking you with a sharp knive but still)

But cheaters don't physically touch your body without your consent.

But the main issue is that Bungie haven't proven that cheaters cost them millions of dollars in revenue. Even in a vanillla piracy case, the prosecution should have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant would have otherwise purchased the product, because the defendant is innocent until proven guilty, and it's better to let a guilty person go free than to convict an innocent person. This is why I consider defense lawyers to be morally superior to prosecution lawyers - as long as the legal process was adhered to, the prosecution is happy to see an innocent person go to jail, whereas the defense is happy to see a guilty person set free (the latter is a lesser of two evils).

 

[smf]

You should get your facts right.

If none of the decompilation projects used their own source code, all of them would had been taken down already, but guess what? They're still provinding updates.

Get your facts straight, they are provably copyright violations that taking them down would have no benefit whatsoever to the copyright holder.

The people doing the GTA decompilation even live streamed themselves violating copyright.

Breaking the law and getting away with it doesn't make it legal. This site should be enough of a clue about that.

I know of plenty of projects on github that violate copyright or DMCA, still there (and no I'm not bringing attention to them).

 

[NoobletCheese]

The people doing the GTA decompilation even live streamed themselves violating copyright.

Here is another example, someone should warn him

 

[tabzer]

Breaking the law and getting away with it doesn't make it legal.

"Breaking the law" doesn't mean anything, unless you are moving to prosecute.

"Legal" is subjective to the ability to enforce. Your claims are an appeal to an authority.

Without this authority present, the veracity of your claims cannot be verified.

 

[NoobletCheese]

"Breaking the law" doesn't mean anything, unless you are moving to prosecute.

"Legal" is subjective to the ability to enforce. Your claims are an appeal to an authority.

I think @smf is simply stating the facts of the matter: that something is illegal. I don't believe they are saying that it SHOULD be illegal.

 

[Jayro]

This is why I like hardware cheat devices. They're mostly undetectable compared to software solutions.

 

[tabzer]

I think @smf is simply stating the facts of the matter: that something is illegal. I don't believe they are saying that it SHOULD be illegal.

Well, he's certainly making accusations, using precedents of a broken justice system to support the claim.

By arguing that something is illegal, in part, you are saying that it should be perceived as so. I'm saying that he doesn't have the authority present to make such determinations, despite how aligned his argument is with his conscience, or how versed he believes he is with law.

 

[NoobletCheese]

Because you're a criminal selling or distributing some kind of product that enables piracy then some behavior that would normally be legitimate is treated as a proof of criminality. Which is fine, because they know you did it all on purpose in the first place, so you deserve it.

I think "enabling piracy" is too broad - anything could enable anything. Jailbreaking enables piracy. Homebrew API's enable people to write backup loaders. Lock picks enable theft.

 

[smf]

I think "enabling piracy" is too broad - anything could enable anything. Jailbreaking enables piracy. Homebrew API's enable people to write backup loaders. Lock picks enable theft.

It has to violate the DMCA, so something that enables piracy by circumventing DRM.

 

[NoobletCheese]

It has to violate the DMCA, so something that enables piracy by circumventing DRM.

Lawyers are paid to word things in such a way that it makes you sound guilty of some huge crime.

 

[smf]

Sure, I don't think this did violate the DMCA. But the prosecution said it did and the judge believed them.

As they didn't dispute what had been done, then they didn't have a defense as DMCA is designed in a way that makes it hard to defend.