Bungie's Ongoing Lawsuit Sees Cheat Maker Countersue Company For Illegally Hacking Its Cheats

Bungie has been on a roll with constant legal battles between cheaters and harassers and even a player allegedly seeking to burn their home office down. Adding to the list of lawsuits is Destiny 2 cheat maker AimJunkies, but the individual under the alias and the group's parent company, Phoenix Digital, is countersuing Bungie. While separate claims, both accuse Bungie of breaking terms of service by reverse-engineering cheat software after purchasing it under an alias and illegally hacking a private computer.

Documents of the countersuit are accessible via The Game Post, which lists several claims by AimJunkies - otherwise known as James May - and Phoenix Digital. On May's part, they claim Bungie illegally hacked their private computer to gain files without permission, which would be the only way to get evidence against them. These claims string in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act clause on an older version of Bungie's licensing agreement. The suit notes May signed the LSLA before Bungie added it to the document since the older version doesn't have the clause about searching through files for anti-cheat purposes, unlike the current Bungie version.

May desires "injunctive relief and damages" for the intrusion, and their claim would see "any device or product in Bungie's custody or control" related to the alleged hack destroyed. On the flip side, Phoenix Digital's claim focuses on an alleged "employee or agent" of Bungie that purchased AimJunkies' Destiny 2 cheats under a "Martin Zeniu" alias in early 2020. What makes this a big deal is that Zeniu accepted the company's terms of service, which prohibits any attempt to "modify, hack, decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, derive source code, or create derivative works of [their] software."

With the combination of both sides, the plaintiffs seek a trial by jury. How it all falls in court will happen over time since both counterclaim parties requested Bungie and other groups become barred from accessing May and Phoenix Digital's computers. Furthermore, all alleged files/reverse-engineered copies should be transferred to May and Phoenix Digital to be destroyed.

Unlike the one-sided lawsuits we've seen in Bungie's past, this one seemingly is convincing for the opposing group. What are your thoughts?