Lawsuits Suggest Some Video Game Cheating Could Be Illegal

A raft of lawsuits from the games industry seeks to crack down on cheating in some popular online games, arguing that making cheats for games and even using them might be illegal. From a report: Cheating is a scourge of many online games, inspiring increasingly bold legal counteroffensives by some of the companies who make them. Those lawsuits are largely aimed against makers of cheat software, but they don't let players who use the cheats fully off the hook.Cheat-makers 'induce and enable individual Destiny 2 players to create an unauthorized and infringing derivative work each time they deploy the cheat software,' states one lawsuit from Sony-owned Bungie Studios that's still winding its way through the courts.

The kinds of cheats in play aren't the ones old-school gamers might have applied by inputting a developer-programmed invincibility code. Rather, they involve premium cheats that let players see through walls to get an advantage in multiplayer combat games such as Destiny 2 or Call of Duty. Game companies, many of which are banning tens and hundreds of thousands of accounts, say cheating scares off honest players and is costly to fight. Bungie estimated in one suit that it spends 'roughly $1,250,000 per year on its anti-cheating measures,' not including legal costs.

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