Judge issues legal permaban, $500K judgment against serial Destiny 2 cheater

Enlarge / Artist's conception of the judge getting ready to legally blast the defendant into Destiny 2's version of non-existence. (credit: Bungie)

Just over a year ago, Bungie went to court to try to stop a serial Destiny 2 cheater who had evaded multiple account bans and started publicly threatening Bungie employees. Now, that player has been ordered to pay $500,000 in copyright-based damages and cannot buy, play, or stream Bungie games in the future.

In a consent judgment that has apparently been agreed to by both ides of the lawsuit (as dug up by TorrentFreak), district court judge Richard Jones agrees with Bungie's claim that defendant Luca Leone's use of cheat software constitutes "copyright infringement" of Destiny 2. Specifically, the cheat software's "graphical overlay" and use of "inject[ed] code" creates an "unauthorized derivative work" that violates federal copyright law. The judgment imposes damages of $150,000 for violations on each of two infringed works (seemingly encompassing Destiny 2 and its expansions)

Leone also created new accounts to get around multiple ban attempts by Bungie and tried to "opt out" of the game's license agreement as a minor in an attempt to do a legal end run around Bungie's multiple account bans. This made each of Leone's subsequent Destiny 2 logins unlicensed violation of Bungie's copyright, according to the judge's order, which tacks on $2,000 in damages for each of "at least 100" such logins.