Activision has been granted default judgment in the company's case against the cheat provider EngineOwning. Following the judge's decision, EngineOwning now owes a combined amount of over US$14,5M in damages and legal fees.
Activision filed the initial lawsuit in a California district court in January 2022, with EngineOwning being the main target. The cheat provider offers a wide range of cheats for shooters, including Call of Duty, Counter-Strike 2, Battlefield, and more.
Cheat providers are one of the main issues in the shooter community. No matter the video game, cheaters are a headache. Recently, we saw Ubisoft implementing new measures to stop people from cheating in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, with the addition of Mousetrap on console and the QB system on PC.
In October 2021, Call of Duty announced the introduction of the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat, which they defined as a "robust anti-cheat system supported by a team of dedicated professionals focused on fighting unfair play."
However, Activision went one step further in 2022 by filing a lawsuit against EngineOwning, which could create a before and after in everyone's war against cheater providers.
Overall, EngineOwning will have to pay $14,465,000 to Activision, a number that comes from multiplying 200 by the approximate number of times the cheating software was downloaded in the United States, which is 72,328, as noted in the lawsuit's result:
Under the DMCA, a plaintiff "may elect to recover an award of statutory damages for each violation of section 1201 in the sum of no less than $200 or more than $2,500 per act of circumvention, device, product, component, offer, or performance of service, as the court considers just." Here, Plaintiff seeks the minimum statutory damages of $200 under the DMCA, multiplied by the general approximation of the number of downloads by the cheating software in the United States (72,328), for a total of $14,465,000. (Id) The Court finds this request reasonable in light of Defendants' willful conduct and Plaintiff's request for the minimum amount of damages per violation.
Additionally, the judge ordered that the EngineOwning domain must be transferred to Activision.
Plaintiff first requests entry of a permanent injunction to enjoin Defendants' illicit enterprise and to transfer EO's domain name, www.EngineOwning.to, to Plaintiff's control.
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