AirJunkies may have set a precedent, as there has never been a case of a cheat site being convicted of copyright infringement.

Last year, a judge ordered AimJunkies to pay more than $4.3 million to Bungie, which sued the site and its parent company, Phoenix Digital, for copyright infringement in June 2021. In April 2022, a federal court in Seattle partially dismissed Bungie’s lawsuit, saying that the studio, now owned by Sony, had failed to adequately explain how the cheat software could be considered an unauthorized copy of Bungie’s work. However, the court referred other non-copyright claims to arbitration, specifically that the software violated the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA. This led to the $4.3 million fine.

Breaking: Bungie has won its lawsuit against Aimjunkies/Phoenix Digital. Just five figures in damages, since only the revenue for the cheats was in play

Jury sided with Bungie. Rejected Aimjunkies’ counterclaim alleging Bungie illegally went into one of their computers https://t.co/dx3KKsFzYy

— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) May 24, 2024

Now, in a separate lawsuit, also in Seattle, a different judge, dealing mainly with the dismissed copyright aspect of the previous lawsuit, has ruled that AimJunkies, Phoenix Digital Group, and an outside developer, James May (not the Top Gear host), all committed copyright infringement and that the three of them must pay Bungie a total of $63,210. This was reported by TorrentFreak. May appealed, claiming that Bungie had circumvented technological measures and hacked into his computer, but this was rejected and the jury ruled against him.

Bungie’s lawyer James Barker told Game File’s Stephen Totilo: “We are grateful for the diligence, professionalism and care shown by the judge, his staff and the jury. We are committed to our players and will continue to protect them from cheaters, including taking this and future cases to trial.”

However, who knows how far publishers and developers will go after individuals and companies that develop cheats after this, because it could be a bad omen for them. In a few months, we might hear more lawsuits happening against them.

Source: VGC, TorrentFreak, Game File