A well-known creator of video game cheats has been ordered to pay Activision more than $14 million in damages and surrender its domain name.
The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California has granted Activision’s motion for a default judgment in a civil suit against EngineOn, which sells cheats for several Call of Duty games as well as Counter-Strike, Battlefield and Titanfall. Activision was awarded $14,465,600 in statutory damages and $292,912 in attorney fees, and the court issued an injunction preventing EngineOwning from engaging in “unlawful conduct” and transferring its domain name www.EngineOwning.to to Activision.
Activision has successfully demonstrated that EngineOwning continues to sell cheat software to circumvent its security measures and violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This is the minimum statutory damages sought under the DMCA of $200, which multiplied by the general estimate of the number of infringing software downloads in the United States (72,328) totaled $14,465,600. The court found the request “reasonable” under the circumstances.
In February 2023, a judge ruled that EngineOwning must pay Activision $3 million in damages after Activision filed a lawsuit claiming that prominent streamers used Warzone cheats. But EngineOwning continues its work, selling cheats for the 2023 Call of Duty game Modern Warfare 3 as well as Warzone. Activision then waged a protracted battle with the infringing manufacturer that led to this ruling.
The question now becomes whether Activision will see any of the money owed to EngineOwning or claim ownership of the site. At the time of publishing this article, HWID spoofing and cheating tools are still available from EngineOwning, which appears to operate outside the US.
Of course, competitive multiplayer video games have had cheating problems for decades, and Call of Duty in particular has been identified as a cheating and hacking problem, especially in the free-to-download battle royale Warzone on PC. Activision and other video game publishers face an uphill battle in the fight against cheaters, but the Call of Duty company hopes that such rulings will act as a real deterrent as it prepares to release Black Ops 6 later this year.
Overnight, Activision chirping It states that any account found to have committed any form of reinforcing behavior in multiplayer or Warzone ranked play will have their SR reset and removed from the leaderboards before Season 4 begins. “Additionally, as previously announced, accounts that have increased their progress in Ranked Play will be permanently denied access to Ranked Play modes in Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone,” Activision continued.
Wesley is IGN’s UK news editor. You can find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can find Wesley here [email protected] or secretly at [email protected] to communicate
