A new Destiny 2 cheat maker is ruining its competitive multiplayer, and Bungie is banking on its string of recent legal victories to crush it. The Sony-owned studio filed a lawsuit against the group behind the Ring-1 software as it claims the days of players “feeling free to engage in a wholesale assault” on the sci-fi shooter MMO are over.
Bungie has targeted up to 50 defendants in Washington District Court who it alleges are involved in copyright infringement, DMCA violations, and civil conspiracy, according to the lawsuit first reported on by TorrenFreak. The studio claims that Ring-1 uses an exploit in the Windows and Intel processor framework to turn off hardware protections and remain undetected as it feeds false data back to Destiny 2‘s servers.
As a result, players who pay $59 to $119 a month for the services get access to a bunch of different tools that given them unfair advantages like an “Aimbot” that boosts targetting and “Character ESP” which reveals every hidden part of a map. There’s also the dreaded “Misc” cheat which, as Bungie describes it, “includes a ‘ONE POSITION KILL’ hack that allows a player to kill everyone, player and NPC, from a single position.”
It’s the latest in a string of cases Bungie has brought against cheat sellers as it tries to crackdown on a growing industry-wide scourge. While many game companies from Activision to Riot Games have pursued technical solutions to detect, block, and ban cheaters, the Destiny 2 maker has added aggressive court battles to its arsenal. And so far the results speak for themselves. Bungie won $4 million against AimJunkies in February, and $12 million against a seller at VeteranCheats in April.
“The days of Destiny 2 cheaters being free to engage in a wholesale assault on the Destiny 2 game and its community without fear of consequences are over,” Bungie wrote in its latest lawsuit, which it hopes will benefit from those previous victories. In the meantime, however, Destiny 2‘s PVP content still face an uphill battle. In addition to not infrequent cheating on PC, modes like Crucible and Gambit have been short on new content and major overhauls. The legal precedents Bungie establishes could still help it in its broader fight, especially with new online multiplayers coming like the exraction shooter Marathon.