Bungie and Ubisoft are taking cheat-makers to court

News
By published

They've filed a joint lawsuit over cheats for Destiny 2 and Rainbow Six Siege.

Flores - Rainbow Six Siege
(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Ring-1 sell cheats via subscription. For 25 euros a week, a cheater can get a bundle of Rainbow Six Siege hacks like an aimbot, configurable ESP tools to show the health and distance of other players, options to alter weapon spread and recoil, a hardware ID spoofer so they don't get banned (or if they've previously been banned, can get around it), and a "Long Knife", to stab people on the other side of the map.

For 30 euros, a week a cheater gets Destiny 2 hacks including a PvP aimbot, infinite ammo, ESP, and a HWID spoofer. Similar packages are available for Rust, Apex, Legends, Call of Duty, Escape from Tarkov, Hunt Showdown, Dead by Daylight, PUBG, and more.  

The suit also accuses Ring-1 of trademark infringement. "The purchase page for the Destiny 2 Cheats and R6S Cheats includes key art from Plaintiffs' games, along with links to share the customer's purchase of the cheat with others on social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn." The idea anyone would be so proud of buying cheats they'd want to share that with the internet seems baffling, and the thought of announcing you've just bought some Rust hacks to your professional network on LinkedIn is even more absurd. But anyway.

The suit doesn't put a dollar amount on the damages it's demanding, saying that, "Defendants' conduct has resulted in damage to Plaintiffs in an amount to be proven at trial. By Plaintiffs' estimation, such damage may amount to millions of dollars."

This isn't the first time two videogame companies have teamed up to take cheat-sellers to court. Bungie collaborated with Riot to take on GatorCheats earlier this year. Cheats are a serious issue for online multiplayer games, and have become more noticeable as crossplay exposes console players to what was previously more of a PC gaming problem. Sorry about that, console players.

TOPICS
Jody Macgregor
Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

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.