Bungie Files Multi-Milllion Dollar Lawsuit Against Belligerent Destiny 2 Cheater
Bungie is entering the legal arena once again as it files yet another lawsuit, this time against a Destiny 2 player for copyright infringement, fraud, and harassment. According to the lawsuit, Leone has allegedly dodged account bans by repeatedly creating new accounts, which Bungie claims can be considered as serial fraud.
The defendant, Luca Leone, is a known serial cheater within the multiplayer first-person shooter’s community who even streamed and bragged about how Bungie was powerless to stop him, using a different username as soon as one was banned.
“Leone’s use of cheat software […] violates a raft of Federal and state statutes and the express terms of the Limited Software License Agreement (‘LSLA’) by which Bungie makes Destiny 2 available to players. And when he repeatedly created new Bungie accounts to play the game after being banned, claiming with each new account creation that he agreed to terms of the LSLA but never intending to abide by those terms, Leone committed serial fraud.” reads the complaint.
“In fact, one of the terms of the LSLA expressly entitles Bungie to ban Leone from playing the game for his cheating. Yet Leone has now made thirteen separate accounts in his attempts to evade the ban, and each new account was therefore a separate breach of the LSLA,” adds Bungie.
The company also claims that Leone threatened to burn down their office and move to specific developers’ neighborhoods to personally threaten them. “Leone has also repeatedly made threats targeting Bungie and its employees, tweeting about his desire to ‘burn down’ Bungie’s office building and declaring that specific Bungie employees were ‘not safe’ given Leone’s intent to move into their neighborhood.”
On top of that, Bungie also claims that Leone has been engaging in criminal conduct as an active member of “OGUsers”, an account hacking and selling forum. The company claims that Leone sells “presumably stolen” social media accounts on the forum as well as Destiny 2 emblems, which is allegedly another violation of the LSLA. Destiny 2 emblems are “non-transferable digital art badges obtained by in-game achievements or real-world conduct, which are prized by many players, especially collectors.”
Bungie is seeking a minimum of $150k in damages for each count of copyright infringement, along with legal fees and a permanent injunction to prevent Leone from future interactions with Bungie products and employees.
