Videogame cheating is a widespread issue worldwide, more so with highly popular online franchises lilke Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty. Some people even attempt to make a money out of creating cheat codes and selling them out in the internet to gain a profit, which might prompt action by the big companies to extend the hammer of the law, and this was such the case for Activision.

Activision started a lawsuit in 2022 within the US district of California against the videogame cheats company known as EngineOwning, who are some of the biggest names when it comes to online cheating, with them selling cheats for franchises like Call of Duty, Counter Strike and Battlefield, to name a few.

While the court ruling against EngineOwning reached a 3 million payment for Activision from them back in February 2023 according to IGN, EO seems to have continued working on cheat codes for Activision's, at the time, new game of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3". This prompted Activision to continue with the lawsuit and reaching the ruling stated today.

This brings us to May 29th, 2024, and a full resolution from the court case is now publicly available, with the resolution noting that Activision was the winning party for the lawsuit, and EngineOwning will be paying the sum of 14.465 million USD to Activision after several violations of the US' DMCA, with Activision claiming a minimum of $200 USD per each violation, and the number of violations piling up to around 72k in the United States only. EngineOwning was also ordered to turn over their website to Activision according to the court's ruling in the case, as well as to stop developing and distributing/selling cheat codes.

This isn't the first time a gaming company has gone after cheat code creators, as Bungie has also taken action in court against Destiny 2's cheaters, winning in a settlement of 13 million USD.

Source
Court ruling document

 

[ciaomao]

thats a high fine! since the honest players are the ones affected, activision should also pass the money on to the players. e.g. in the form of free DLCs etc.

 

[AndorfRequissa]

the common thing people should learn from these is dont do it for $$. if ur going to offer something in the gaming industry do it for free or dont do it all.

 

[kuro0628neko]

Remember kids, cheating in videogames gets you nowhere.

Incorrect. Cheating in video games lets you win.
/big brain/

 

[Ferris1000]

Cheaters are the Reason why i stopped playing Games online.

 

[Bladexdsl]

suck it cheaters this is why i don't play any MP only games anymore.

 

[Axido]

Just for the record. I don't play online multiplayer games without blaming it on cheaters. I already don't like players that put an abundance of time into a game, acquiring their skill level naturally.

 

[Defective1Up]

Online - get bent, it's a shared space and it affects and hurts others, even financially.
eSports get hit hard with cheaters.

Offline - It's my device I can do what I want with my games. I will never support ANY lawsuit or legislation that messes with that.

I think we all essentially agree on these points.

 

[BlusterBong]

Hey, Hey GBATemp.
Remember when Nintendo famously lost a lawsuit over what amounted to a cheating device

Hey, Hey GBATemp.
Remember how Game Genies were functionally just cheating devices but for hardware like the NES or Sega Genesis that are no different than today's cheating devices and software?

 

[Xzi]

Hey, Hey GBATemp.
Remember how Game Genies were functionally just cheating devices but for hardware like the NES or Sega Genesis that are no different than today's cheating devices and software?

NES and Sega Genesis were/are not online play enabled. Therein lies the the difference. Nobody cares if you cheat exclusively in airplane mode, you're only depriving yourself of a challenge.

 

[LoggerMan]

Cheating online is disgusting. Very different to modding an online game for fun, especially an online game that has effectively been abandoned (though these days live service games aren't peer to peer and you can't run your own servers, so once modern games are abandoned they are gone forever).

 

[chrisrlink]

Remember kids, cheating in videogames gets you nowhere.

yeah considering half the pokemon vgc contenders should be in Japanese prison cells by now (pretty sure they went with kid gloves on it to prevent a diplomatic nightmare and just DQ'd them, welll this year vgc's are in alohla er hawaii so cheating scumbags will come out of the woodwork again

 

[Maq47]

I agree, this was a good outcome. Online cheaters are the absolute worst spawn of the Devil to ever grace the web.

 

[vintageperson]

Remember kids, cheating in videogames gets you nowhere.

Wrong it gets you sued.

 

[master801]

NES and Sega Genesis were/are not online play enabled. Therein lies the the difference. Nobody cares if you cheat exclusively in airplane mode, you're only depriving yourself of a challenge.

The developers of XBAND (basically back-in-the-day netplay through a cartridge) considered adding a cheat menu, but it was scrapped for obvious reasons.

 

[ModernSithLord]

Given how many people cheat in call of duty, glad activision did this. I am all for cheating in single player games but multiplayer just ruins the experience for everyone.

 

[Metoroid0]

If it's online I agree shouldn't be cheats

But offline games no one on gbatemp of all places should applaud Activision. There's been cheat codes for offline games since NES and it was never a problem.

this.

Post automatically merged: Jun 9, 2024

Hate to see Activision win anything, but paying for cheats is on par with paying for piracy.

not really.