Activision «has extracted» more than $14 million from a Call of Duty cheat developer — they have been downloaded 72,000 times

Activision has won a legal victory in the case against German cheat distributor EngineOwning. U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald awarded Activision $14,465,600 in compensation for loss of profits, as well as another $292,912 in attorney’s fees.

EngineOwning has been providing players with access to an extensive library of cheat programs since 2014. The library contains cheats for many Call of Duty games, as well as EA multiplayer games such as Battlefield and Titanfall. Access to cheats is provided on a subscription basis.

The amount of damages of $14.4 million was determined by multiplying the known number of users of EngineOwning’s fraudulent software by a predetermined fine for each violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Activision demanded that the court only award EngineOwning the minimum statutory damages, which amounted to $200. More than 72 thousand cases of players using EngineOwning cheats were listed, resulting in a total of $14,465,600 in fines for violating the DMCA. Activision was also entitled to $5600 in attorney’s fees plus an additional 2% fee for every $100,000 in fines, which totaled $292,912.

Activision filed a lawsuit back in 2022. The lawsuit claimed that the popularity of Call of Duty led to the creation of a secondary market for cheats. Thus, the use of cheats led to the destruction of the gaming experience for players who did not cheat but quit the game or turned to competing products that did not suffer from cheats. Activision also claimed that the existence of EngineOwning’s cheat software damaged the reputation of Call of Duty and ultimately deprived Activision of millions of dollars.

Ten defendants, including the co-founders of EngineOwning, did not appear at the hearing, and the court must decide how to distribute the fines among them.

Source: windowscentral