Bungie got a bit stuck in its legal campaign against Destiny 2 cheat sellers in May when a Seattle judge dismissed his copyright infringement complaint (opens in new tab) against cheat maker AimJunkies. Bungie had argued that developing cheats was an infringement of its copyright, while AimJunkies defends its software as an original creation – and the judge agreed with AimJunkies.
That was not the end of the matter. Other elements of Bungie’s lawsuit remained intact, including allegations of trademark infringement and “false designation of origin,” and the studio was given time to reiterate the copyright infringement section. A few weeks later, it did just that, claiming that AimJunkies “reverse engineered and copied the software code for Destiny 2” to create its cheat software.
For example, to create the cheat software’s ESP feature, which allows users to see other players through walls, Bungie claimed that AimJunkies “copied the Destiny 2 software code that matches the player positioning data structures.” [in] Destiny 2 and reverse engineering the software code for Destiny 2’s rendering functions.”
The revised complaint is certainly more detailed, but AimJunkies isn’t backing down — in fact, according to a new Torrentfreak (opens in new tab) report, the cheatmaker is pursuing its own legal action in defense of its software and the right to sell it. The site says that AimJunkies is issuing subpoenas to Valve, PayPal, and Google, seeking information that it apparently hopes will prove its cheats did not harm Bungie, contrary to what the studio claims.
In a press release on the site, AimJunkies also defended its Destiny 2 overlay, saying it’s no different from the one in Steam.
“It is our belief that OUR range of software products simply did what Steam and countless others do with overlays. The Steam overlay and others love [it], we also do not believe are derivative works,” wrote AimJunkies. “Bungie also claims that we caused serious damage to their game, when in fact some of their most popular months of player counts and sales occurred during the time AimJunkies offered their software products. We believe and intend to gather useful evidence of that and disprove another of their wild claims.”
Interestingly, AimJunkies also suggested that it would take its own legal action against an employee or contractor who allegedly purchased AimJunkies’ cheat software and then turned it over to an “unnamed company” to be decompiled and analyzed – an act that, according to AimJunkies is in violation of its terms of service. It also accused Bungie of trying to make cheating illegal “because they can’t control their own players”.
“They are looking to the courts to do what they ‘Bungie’ themselves cannot do, even with the vast resources and technologies at their disposal,” the press release said. “They would rather die by a thousand cuts than admit that this is not the way to solve the problem.
“We at” [AimJunkies parent] Phoenix Digital Group has offered to work with Bungie to obtain multiple solutions to their problem. We mostly believe it would be to implement our features in some version of their game for distribution, but their pride and bully mentality forbids them to think outside the box.”
It’s a bit of a bizarre and incoherent statement. It’s not clear what Bungie would get from distributing a version of Destiny 2 with built-in cheats, or why it would have to partner with another company to do this – or if, as cheat makers themselves, they are expected to be in a better position than Bungie to effectively eradicate cheating.
Usually, when Bungie (or a game company) takes legal action against a cheatmaker, things tend to wrap up quickly with a settlement and closure: companies like Ring-1 (opens in new tab)PerfectAim (opens in new tab)Elite Boss Tech (opens in new tab), and 11020781 Canada (and, of course, the people behind them) have all pitched in in the face of lawsuits, keen not to get heavily hammered by the courts. But AimJunkies is holding out for now. It will at least be interesting to see what happens next.
Bungie declined to comment on the matter. I have reached out to AimJunkies for comment and will update if I get a response.
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