Bungie Loses On Copyright Claims Against Cheat Seller
Nearly the entire online-game-playing world hates the fact that cheating in online games exist. The cheaters don't, obviously. Nor do those that make money by selling cheats and hacks for online games. Given the majority/minority situation here, it's perhaps not terribly surprising that efforts to combat online cheating very often go way, way too far. There are countries out there that have actually criminalized the practice of cheating in online games. More common in America, another tactic has been the publishers and developers of these games arguing in court that using or selling these cheats and hacks constitutes one form of intellectual property infringement or another. Epic infamously targeted minors in lawsuits over their use of cheating tools. Riot Games and Blizzard also participated in this bastardization of copyright law, arguing that cheating breaks the game's EULA, and that therefore meant playing the game in an unauthorized state, therefore copyright infringement. It's a really dumb legal theory that unfortunately hasn't received nearly the pushback it deserves.
Until now, perhaps. See, Bungie also participated in this madness, having taken a site called AimJunkies to court over Destiny 2 cheats it sold. In addition to claims that the site infringed Bungie's trademarks, a dubious claim at best, Bungie also tried the copyright angle. Unfortunately, this particular court managed sanity for once and saw through the copyright claims.
A federal court in Seattle has dismissed Bungie's copyright infringement claims against cheat seller AimJunkies.com. While it's not disputed that Destiny 2 Hacks' were offered for sale, the court is not convinced that these are copyright infringing. The trademark claims are intact, however, so the case is far from resolved.
The background on this is that AimJunkies had already removed the offending content from its site and entered into arbitration with Bungie. Forced arbitration is very specifically laid out in Bungie's own licensing agreement. Despite being in arbitration, Bungie moved for summary judgement on the case, pissing off its arbitration interlocutor. Because of that, AimJunkies moved to have the case dismissed entirely. As AimJunkies indicated: no actual copying of Bungie's IP occurred from a copyright perspective and every other claim ought to be settled via arbitration.
On the copyright side of things, at least, the court agrees.
After reviewing the positions from both sides, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Zilly has now ruled on the matter. Judge Zilly dismisses the copyright claims as Bungie failed to show that AimJunkies copied its work.
Notably, Bungie has not pleaded any facts explaining how the cheat software constitutes an unauthorized copy of any of the copyrighted works identified in the complaint. Bungie's complaint must contain more than a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action'," Judge Zilly writes.
Judge Zilly also agrees to refer the non-copyright and trademark-related claims to arbitration, as AimJunkies requested. This is in line with Bungie's own license agreement and both parties are encouraged to resolve these issues outside of court.
Now, this isn't necessarily all the way over. Bungie has room to refile the copyright claims with additional - to be read as any" - evidence of actual copyright taking place. It also appears that the trademark claims were sufficient to go to trial, so that part continues. Though, as I hinted above, how Bungie is going to demonstrate that the public was in any way confused into thinking these cheats or AimJunkies were part of Bungie is beyond me.
Regardless, it's nice to see a court finally ask the relevant question when it comes to online cheating and copyright: is there any actual copying occurring? If no, then this should be the result each and every time.