Court tells Destiny 2 cheat makers that yes, cheating actually is bad

Bungie, the developer behind Destiny 2, has been in the middle of a finger-pointing lawsuit lately. The studio originally sought to put a damper on cheaters in its game by going directly to the source and suing Phoenix Digital Group, the owners of the website AimJunkies.com, which purportedly sold a Destiny 2 aimbot hack.

Bungie claimed that this site encouraged and induced players to break Bungie’s user agreement for playing Destiny 2, as well as infringed upon Bungie’s copyright on the game and sought to get around Bungie’s technological measures meant to keep the game secure. Phoenix Digital soon fired back with a countersuit against Bungie, saying that it wasn’t breaking any laws at all and that Bungie was trying to “bamboozle” the court system into punishing the group when it had committed no crime. The countersuit also claimed that Bungie hacked AimJunkies by accessing an associate’s computer to gather information on it and then trying to reverse-engineer AimJunkie’s source code.

If all that sounds a bit circuitous, that’s because it is. Bungie sued Phoenix Digital for hacking its game and creating cheats for it, and Phoenix Digital turned around and sued Bungie for hacking the group to try to combat its cheats, and that also cheating in a video game isn’t against the law. It’s a fun tactic but not one that looks like it’s holding up very well in court since a judge recently granted Bungie’s motion to dismiss Phoenix Digital’s countersuit without prejudice.

It’s a big win for Bungie and a big loss for Phoenix Digital’s “nuh-uh, you did it” legal strategy. The company behind AimJunkies still has until Nov. 21 to refile its countersuit if it so chooses as the motion was dismissed without prejudice, opening the door for the group to clarify its claims and strengthen the countersuit beyond “your honor, they hacked me first.”

This is Bungie’s second major lawsuit against a cheat maker as the studio settled a lawsuit against GatorCheats in 2021 for $2 million. The settlement also saw GatorCheats be required by the court to “destroy” its Bungie Cheating Software.

The studio seems to be heading toward another win in this area if recent court rulings are anything to go by. And if so, all of the guardians out there can rest easy in the knowledge that a few less cheaters will be populating their lobbies pretty soon.