Bungie, the developer behind Destiny 2, has won a $12 million dollar lawsuit against Romanian cheat seller Mihai Claudiu-Florentin, who allegedly runs the website Veteran Cheats. Bungie first filed a lawsuit back in 2021 against several cheat makers for violating the game’s terms of service and copyright laws. Bungie alleged the defendants both created and distributed cheating software to give players an unfair advantage, such as aimbots, wall hacks and other exploits that harmed Destiny 2’s balance. Bungie sought total of $12 million back in February from Veteran Cheats, a chunk of it for copyright infringement of $146,662.28, along with $217,250.70 in attorney’s fees and $11,696,000 in statutory damages of the DMCA. The statutory damages were a result of the total number of cheats sold by Veteran Cheats at 5848, which equaled $2,000 per cheat.
Bungie has filed numerous other lawsuits since 2021, some already settled and others still ongoing, against cheat makers and sellers, as well as a streamer who cheated in game resulting in over 100 of his respective YouTube videos being taken down for copyright infringement. Last year Bungie scored legal win against Elite Boss Tech which they sued for $13.5 million for cheating software. Bungie has taken with an iron fist against players who seek to cheat, hurt the player base, or merely tamper with the game, showing they take any violation of Destiny 2’s terms seriously.
Destiny 2 has been dealt increasing challenges in the past few years, numerous leaks make the list, as well as frequent technical issues. Most recently in April, a Twitch streamer was accused of leaking future update to Destiny 2 after a secretive presentation by Bungie shown to select players, who all had to sign NDAs of course. Bungie responded to the leak verifying its authenticity stating, “Breaches of this trust could result in our inability to hold more summits. We take these breaches extremely seriously and are taking actions to reinforce our policies with those invited to these internal meetings.”