Bellevue, Wash.-based video game developer Bungie has filed a new lawsuit that targets multiple individuals who make and distribute cheat programs for Bungie’s flagship game Destiny 2.
The suit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Seattle, names 56 individual people in the USA, UK, and Australia as staffers, resellers, and the operator of the payment processing service for Ring-1, a website that offers for-profit cheats for multiple popular online video games.
Ring-1’s Destiny 2 cheats, for $59/month, include an “aimbot” that greatly increases players’ accuracy, the ability to tweak render distances so a player can see enemies coming from further away, an “ESP” feature that makes other players visible through obstacles, and infinite ammunition.
It also offers a Pro-level cheat package, for $119/month, that includes the ability to fly (in a game where you typically can’t do that), pass through walls, and instantly revive from death. Both cheat packages are still available for sale at time of writing.
The use of cheat programs like this is typically a violation of the Limited Software License Agreement (LSLA) that users must agree to in order to play a game like Destiny 2. Being caught using a third-party cheat program can have consequences up to and including the permanent loss of a user’s account.
In the lawsuit, Bungie’s representatives write that “the proliferation of cheating is a direct threat to the success – social, commercial, and artistic – of Destiny 2,” and that Ring-1’s cheats are particularly dangerous, as they are allegedly “predicated on an insidious misuse of the hypervisor layer of users’ operating systems that puts their computers and others’ at risk.”
The suit further alleges that Bungie “has lost considerable revenue” as a result of Ring-1’s actions, and that in order to create the hacks in the first place, Ring-1’s staffers have repeatedly violated the Destiny 2 LSLA.
As a result, Bungie’s suit seeks to permanently prevent the named defendants from continuing to play, possess copies of, or develop cheats for Destiny 2, in addition to unspecified damages.
This is the latest in a series of lawsuits filed against for-profit cheat makers by Bungie. So far this year, it’s taken three separate companies to court and won, on charges of making hacks for Destiny 2, the most recent of which was the Indian company Lavicheats in May.
This also marks the latest chapter in an ongoing legal battle between Bungie and Ring-1 in particular. Previously, Bungie had partnered with the French gaming company Ubisoft (Rainbow Six: Siege) to sue Ring-1 for similar charges, estimating in its court filing that around 4,000 players of Destiny 2 were using Ring-1 cheats at the time.
While three of the four defendants named in the suit settled with Bungie and Ubisoft for $600,000 in damages, a California court rejected the companies’ request for $2.2 million in damages. None of the defendants from the 2021 case are among the Ring-1 employees that are specifically named in the Aug. 1 suit.
In a separate case in July, Bungie successfully sued a Destiny 2 player who ran an online harassment campaign against one of Bungie’s community managers in 2022. Jesse James Comer, who was allegedly enraged by a community spotlight on a black Destiny 2 fan artist, used anonymous phone numbers to leave a series of racist voicemails for the community manager and his wife.
Comer was found liable for nearly $500,000 in damages, in a rare, precedent-setting example of strong legal consequences for online trolling.
Bungie’s suit against Ring-1 accuses its employees of copyright infringement; civil violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) act; violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; breach of contract; intentional interference with contractual relations; and civil conspiracy.
Notably, the suit targets six Ring-1 employees by name, ten by their Internet handle, and another 40 as John Does, rather than Ring-1 itself.
GeekWire reached out to Bungie for comment, and we’ll update this post if we hear back.
Bungie’s war on cheat companies continues with another lawsuit by GeekWire on Scribd
