Bungie Is Suing A Destiny YouTuber For More Than $7 Million For Allegedly Impersonating The Company

Fraudulent takedown notices are nothing new on YouTube. Many content creators have stories about how someone else claimed their content through the site’s copyright protection system for various reasons. This, however, maybe the first time a YouTuber has filed DCMA strikes against his own friends in response to a valid DCMA claim filed against him by a game developer.

Last December, Bungie issued a takedown notice against YouTuber Nick Minor – also known as Lord Nazo – after he uploaded music from the Destiny 2 expansion The Taken King. Apparently, Minor left the video up anyway and waited for it to be forcibly removed in January.

Now, Bungie is claiming that that same YouTuber has been impersonating the company in order to file takedown notices against other YouTubers. The claim states that Minor created fake Gmail accounts in order to pretend to be a representative CSC – a brand protection firm. He then reportedly used these to file takedown notices against members of the YouTube community, several of who believed Minor to be their friend.

Bungie is now suing Minor for close to $7.7 million, claiming that Minor issued the notices “in retaliation for Bungie enforcing its copyrights against material Minor uploaded to his own YouTube channel.” The claim states that Minor used the confusion by his own false notices to file a counternotification with YouTube on the video that started it all. He pushed the idea that Bungie’s takedown notice against him was part of the wave of his own fraudulent claims. Bungie feels that the company is entitled to “damages and injunctive relief, including enhanced statutory damages of $150,00 for each of the videos”.

As for those impacted by Minor’s actions, they were apparently shocked to find out that it wasn’t just a friend, but someone who had been in conversations with them about the claims against their content – even telling them how easy it is for someone to fake these claims. The fact that some of them shared the conversations on Twitter might help Bungie with their case.

Nazo lied to us, started a Discord group DM with me, Promethean, Breshi, and Lorcan0c, and then said things like this, all while acting like he was a victim. pic.twitter.com/FG1JnjIJhU

— Owen Spence (@AtlyxMusic) June 22, 2022