Bungie’s War on Destiny 2 cheat makers has finally seen some success, as one of the accused has finally admitted to wrongdoing and has agreed to settle for $13.5 Million.
Cheat maker Elite Boss Tech sold Destiny 2 cheats on its website. When it came to Bungie’s notice, a lawsuit followed soon after and thus began the developer’s legal crusade against the cheat seller. Now, it seems that the seller has admitted to its wrongdoing and has agreed to a massive settlement.
According to TorrentFreak, Robert James Duthie Nelson, owner of Elite Boss Tech and others involved have admitted the charges against them. They also admitted that they willfully circumvented Destiny 2’s technological measures which were in direct violation of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions. Additionally, they also admitted that the cheats provided added a ‘graphical overlay’ which was directly integrated into Destiny 2’s copyrighted code. This created 'unlicensed derivative work' which was also a violation mentioned in the lawsuit.
The case revealed that cheat software for Destiny 2 was downloaded 6765 times. Considering each download was considered as a separate individual violation of the anti-circumvention provisions, the cheat maker was charged $2000 per violation which comes up to $13,530,000.
This is a great victory for Bungie considering a court recently dismissed its claims against one of the hack providers, AimJunkies, owned by Phoenix Digital Group. While there is still work to be done on that front, this win just bolsters the developer's position against cheat makers. Bungie has also teamed up with developers Riot and Ubisoft to fight against cheat software developers.
Bungie has incorporated BattleEye Anti-Cheat into Destiny 2 to counter hackers ruining the game’s experience for everyone. While that may have been fairly successful since the PvP modes hacker reports have reduced, there are still other hack makers to be brought down.
Elite Boss Tech also agreed to refrain from infringing on Bungie’s copyrighted material ever again. Hopefully, there will be similar results in its legal battle against other cheat manufacturers as well.