Yesterday’s jury resolution awarded Bungie (PDF) a tidy sum of $63,210. Bungie counsel James Barker mentioned in an announcement emailed to The Verge that the corporate is “dedicated to our gamers and can proceed to guard them towards cheats, together with taking this and future circumstances all the way in which to trial.”
In 2021, Bungie sued AimJunkies and 4 defendants (right here’s a PDF of the criticism), alleging, amongst different issues, that they hacked Future 2 to repeat the code used to make cheats. A few of Bungie’s complaints — like that AimJunkies violated a DMCA provision forbidding circumvention of copyright safety tech — went to arbitration and noticed Bungie successful $4 million. AimJunkies appealed after the choose confirmed that award. That attraction continues to be in course of, as Polygon wrote this week.
Phoenix Digital founder David Schaefer will transfer to dismiss the jury’s verdict and attraction it if obligatory, in accordance with Totilo. Nevertheless that shakes out, the decision is important, provided that dishonest lawsuits are inclined to conclude in different methods, like settlements. (For instance, a choose shut down a Grand Theft Auto cheat distributor in 2018 following a Take-Two Interactive lawsuit, or when Bungie settled one other dishonest lawsuit in 2022 for $13.5 million.)
The win could solely imply pocket change for Bungie, and it gained’t seemingly put an finish to on-line dishonest, but it surely does put a jury on file in regards to the legality of making such cheats. That makes this extra important than the pocket-change-for-Bungie $63,000 award lets on.