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Activision has taken the war against Call of Duty cheat sellers in a rather aggressive manner, with compensation clearly not the only thing on their agenda.
Before going into finer details, it should be noted that even the latest releases such as Call of Duty Vanguard and the popular Call of Duty Warzone Pacific have had several problems due to cheaters. The situation hasn't improved much despite the addition of Ricochet, an anti-cheat protocol implemented at the kernel level.
Activision is already quite proactive, banning thousands of accounts suspected of cheating. But things have turned out to be more serious, with the major video game publisher aiming directly for the source. If their fresh demands are anything to go by, the makers of these cheats will have nowhere to hide.
Activision requests court to grant permission to investigate identities of cheat makers for Call of Duty
It's well known worldwide that Activision has filed a lawsuit against EngineOwning, a German website accused of selling cheats for several Call of Duty titles. The huge lawsuit is estimated at a whopping $800 million and was filed at the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
Activision has made a fresh plea to the same federal institution to reveal the identity of the people behind the cheats. An important sentence in the plea reads:
"For leave to serve fifteen subpoenas necessary for Activision to learn the identities of unnamed or alias 'Doe' defendants in this action and to ensure that all necessary parties have been named in this lawsuit."
Activision believes that things like social media, payment processors, and Steam, among other things, can be used to track the cheat makers down. Activision further stated that the cheaters and their associates have even opened accounts which are being used to 'troll' the counsels being used in the process.
The fresh developments have been on the back of the original complaints filed in the early days of January. The main accusations against the cheat makers are pretty straightforward:
"Engaged in the development, sale, distribution, marketing, and exploitation of a portfolio of malicious cheats and hacks for popular online multiplayer games, most prominently the [Call of Duty] games."
Activision has also claimed how the cheat makers have exploited the brand name of Call of Duty and caused severe damage to the company and their games' playerbase with the below statement:
"Notwithstanding those efforts, defendants' sale and distribution of the cheating software has caused Activision to suffer massive and irreparable damage to its goodwill and reputation and to lose substantial revenue."
Activision fans will have to wait and see what future proceedings will be. If the relevant identities are revealed, it would quite likely be one of the biggest investigations in the gaming industry in recent years. While some in the community feel that such steps are too harsh, this is possibly the only concrete way to combat malpractices and cheating in multiplayer gaming.
