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Destiny 2 cheat maker AimJunkies has countersued the game's developer Bungie for allegedly hacking a personal computer and violating terms of service by buying the cheat under a false identity.
Bungie has been involved in a long-drawn legal battle against cheat makers who've helped countless Guardians cheat through many PvP activities. A few weeks back, the company settled its previous lawsuit for a total of $13.5 million USD.
However, the recent twist in a long series of events has seen the cheat maker and its parent company file a countersuit against Bungie while seeking an unspecified monetary amount in damages.
Destiny 2 cheat maker sues Bungie for allegedly violating TOS
This case is rather interesting. As mentioned above, the cheat makers, known as AimJunkie under their parent company Phoenix Digital, sued Destiny 2 developer Bungie on two different counts. The first lawsuit was filed on behalf of James May. It's unclear if May is related to either AimJunkie or Phoenix Digital; however, recent reports suggest May is a "member" of AimJunkie.
According to the lawsuit, the company claimed that Bungie had accessed files on May's computer without his consent. Moreover, the lawsuit further states that May had proven that Bungie's Legal Service Level Agreement (LSLA) had no clause which spoke about the developers being able to access some files on the user's device for Destiny 2 anti-cheat purposes.
Although the current LSLA does have provisions for that, the one before this had no such provisions. These claims call upon the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and if proven to be accurate, Bungie will have to turn over any evidence they found on May's computer and then destroy their copy.
Secondly, Phoenix Digital also accused Bungie of violating their Terms of Service. According to the cheat makers, a Bungie employee under the name Martin Zeniu purchased cheat software from the company in early 2020. Bungie then allegedly used this software to reverse engineer an anti-cheat mechanism for Destiny 2.
In doing so, the company allegedly violated Phoenix Digital's Terms of Service because of a clause prohibiting others from modifying, hacking, decompiling, disassembling, reversing engineering, deriving source code, or creating derivative work for the software in question.
For now, counter-claim parties are trying to push for a trial by jury, but it's unclear where the direction of the case will be heading.
Such an interesting turn of events has rarely been seen in the gaming industry. Destiny 2 has often been plagued with cheaters, especially in high-stakes modes like Trials of Osiris and Iron Banner. While the number of cheaters has drastically reduced, some still exist, and Bungie has done an excellent job clearing them from the game.
However, in its attempt to do so, if Bungie has indeed snooped on someone else's system, they might be in a spot of bother because this will bring up questions about an individual's privacy and online safety. It's difficult to predict how the courts will perceive the case and what the verdict will be.
Given how everything is panning out, AimJunkies has a strong defense, and this entire countersuit might trouble Bungie in the coming few months.
