Activision has filed a lawsuit against cheat site EngineOwning

(Image credit: Activision)

On January 4, Activision filed a lawsuit in the Central District of California against EngineOwning, one of the more popular sites currently selling cheats for Call of Duty: Warzone and other online shooters. The suit describes EngineOwning as "a German business entity and numerous individuals", accusing them of "trafficking in circumvention devices", "intentional interference with contractual relations", and "unfair competition".

EngineOwning offers subscriptions that bundle together cheats including aimbots, wallhacks, radar, triggerbots (which shoot automatically when aiming at a player, or optionally whenever one is within a set range), recoil and bullet-spread removal, rapid fire, and various workarounds for anti-cheat detection.

EngineOwning's cheats are available for various Call of Duty games, as well as several Battlefield games, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Titanfall 2, Splitgate, and Halo Infinite. Apparently they're working on cheats for Overwatch too.

Activision's lawsuit "seeks to put a stop to unlawful conduct by an organization that is distributing and selling for profit numerous malicious software products designed to enable members of the public to gain unfair competitive advantages". The publisher also says, "Activision is entitled to Defendants' profits" or failing that, "Alternatively, Activision is entitled to the maximum statutory damages… in the amount of $2,500 with respect to each violation by Defendants" as well as legal costs.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.