Since 2021, the Destiny 2 developer, Bungie has been taking major steps to tackle cheaters and cheat sellers in the game, that includes filing lawsuits against the developers of these cheat software. We’ve already seen a couple of lawsuits from Bungie against some prominent Destiny 2 cheat sellers like Elite Boss Tech, Ring-1, and VeteranCheats.
In August 2021, Bungie filed a lawsuit against VeteranCheats.com, one of many Destiny 2 cheat sellers. Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Bungie identified one of the individuals named Mihai Claudiu-Florentin, who was operating the cheat software.
On February 7, 2023, Bungie filed a motion for default judgment against the defendants (pdf here). According to the motion, Bungie is seeking a total of $12 million ($12,059,912.98) in this default, which includes copyright infringement claims, circumvention claims, and attorney fees.
“Bungie is entitled to default judgment on its claims and an award in the amount of $12,059,912.98. This amount includes actual damages of $146,662.28 on Bungie’s copyright infringement claims.
“Statutory damages of $11,696,000 on its circumvention claims (at $2,000 per circumvention device sold); and attorneys’ fees and costs in the amount of $217,250.70 to be supplemented with an award of Bungie’s attorneys’ fees and costs incurred after submission of this Motion.”
There have been at least “5,848 separate transactions for either a Destiny 2 Cheat or a premium cheat product containing Destiny 2 as an option” to the defendant’s Stripe account.
Bungie has Spent Over $2m to Combat Destiny 2 Cheats
It’s also been revealed that since November 2020, Bungie has spent more than $2 million alone to mitigate cheats in the game, which includes setting up “in-house cheat detection efforts” as well as “several forms of anti-cheat software, including but not limited to BattlEye”.
“Around September 2021, shortly after this lawsuit was filed and after Destiny 2 began to employ ‘BattlEye’ anti-cheat software in addition to Bungie’s in-house tools, we observed a rapid and several-fold increase in the advertised price of tracked boosting services.
“This correlation strongly suggests that cheat software is a practical necessity for that parasitic industry to function efficiently. We have no data to suggest that players using boosting services are informed when a booster plans to use cheat software and thereby imperil their account,” Bungie’s Deputy General Counsel James Barker says in his declaration. (pdf here)
Apart from that, Bungie has also sued a Destiny 2 YouTuber for $7m who sent fake DMCA takedowns on behalf of Bungie last year. Several content creators as well as Bungie were hit by these takedowns.
Destiny 2’s newest expansion–Lightfall is just around the corner, that adds a brand-new subclass called “Strand”, a new secret city on Neptune called Neomuna, and tons of new weapons and armor.
Destiny 2 Lightfall launches on February 28, 2023, on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC.