Independent video game studio Bungie, headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., filed federal lawsuits on Thursday in Seattle against three companies that make and market cheat programs for Bungie’s massively-multiplayer first-person shooter Destiny 2.
Bungie’s suit against Elite Boss Tech Inc., based in Montreal, alleges copyright infringement, civil conspiracy, breach of contract, intentional interference with contractual relations, and violations of the Digital Milennium Copyright Act, the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
If found liable, Elite Boss Tech would be forced to shut down and destroy all of its cheat programs related to Destiny 2, and would be legally prohibited from continuing to play Destiny 2 or offering cheats for any future games that Bungie produces. It would also be on the hook for Bungie’s court costs, punitive damages, and an unspecified amount of financial restitution that Bungie’s suit leaves up to the court’s discretion.
We’ve reached out to Bungie for comment, and will update this story if we hear back.
Bungie’s other two suits are against Kunal Bansal, who owns and operates LaviCheats.com, and the largely unidentified staff of VeteranCheats.com. Bungie seeks similar damages from both companies, but the suits are listed as complaints with a jury demand.
These companies openly make and market cheat programs for a variety of popular online PC games, including Apex Legends, Dead by Daylight, Rust, and Warframe. Unscrupulous or trolling players can pay for a hack that provides them with a variety of big advantages in-game, such as computer-assisted aiming, always being able to see every nearby opponent, or being able to walk through walls.
The high number of charges against Elite Boss Tech in particular may stem from sheer visibility. Unlike the other two sites, which are front pages for message boards and have kept most of their staff anonymous, Elite Boss Tech’s cheat site is structured like it’s just another software company providing a service. It comes complete with customer testimonials and employee headshots.
This follows up on a similar suit that Bungie filed in late July, alongside the French mega-developer Ubisoft, against the cheat-maker company Ring-1. It also quietly brought a suit against Aimjunkies in mid-June.
Bungie previously forced the cheat provider GatorCheats to shut down, following a joint suit it filed in California in January with League of Legends creator Riot Games, and filed a claim with another cheat provider, PerfectAim, that made it take down all of its Destiny 2 hacks in October.
Yesterday, Bungie filed three more lawsuits against Destiny 2 cheat makers, Lavicheats, Veterancheats, and Wallhax, EliteBossTech. | #Destiny2
(via @PaulTassi) pic.twitter.com/psWVTYOZwx
— DestinyNews+ (@DestinyNewsCom) August 19, 2021
The use of these hacks is a violation of most games’ built-in terms of service, so a player caught using them might get their account suspended or banned. In the meantime, however, they’ve likely ruined at least one match for somebody else, and due to the sheer size of some PC games’ player communities, it can take a long time before staffers get around to dealing with an individual offender. It’s an endemic problem in the online gaming space.
With Destiny 2 in particular, it’s been an issue ever since the game arrived on Steam in 2019. With multiple rewards and bragging rights locked behind organized player-vs-player game modes, cheaters quickly became an issue, with PC Gamer reporting a 50% uptick in cheating incidents in the first six months of 2020.
Bungie has reacted by opening a role for a data engineer at its company in July, specifically to specialize in anti-cheating methods. Bungie also announced on Thursday that the next season of content for Destiny 2, whenever it might appear, will feature support from the BattlEye anti-cheat system.
While anti-cheat systems aren’t infallible — cheat provider sites will often offer advice for how to get around them, like deliberately letting yourself get killed occasionally so your hacked advantage doesn’t become too obvious — Bungie is making some big moves here via the legal system.
