EngineOwning, a cheat maker for various games, including the Call of Duty franchise, Counter-Strike, Battlefield, and Titanfall, has been ordered to pay $14 million to Activision for copyright violation.
The high-profile cheat maker has also been ordered to hand over its domain name following a decision by the United States District Court of the Central District of California. The development comes after Activision moved forward with a motion for default judgment in the civil case against EngineOwning.
Activision's Legal Victory Against Cheat Maker
(Photo : Activision / Screenshot taken from official website)
The exact amount that the cheat maker was ordered to pay is $14,465,600 in statutory damages and $292,912 in attorneys' fees. Additionally, the United States court issued a permanent injunction to enjoin EngineOwning's "unlawful conduct" and to transfer its domain name to the Call of Duty creator.
Activation was able to successfully argue that the cheat maker continued to circumvent the company's security systems and sell its products in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The video game studio called for the minimum statutory damages of $200 under the DMCA multiplied by the general approximation of the number of downloads of the cheating software in the U.S., which was 72,328, according to IGN.
The decision comes as in February last year, a judge ruled that EngineOwning was required to pay Activision $3 million in damages. This was following a lawsuit where the video game studio claimed high-profile streamers also used Warzone cheats.
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However, the cheat maker continued its operations and sold cheats for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 when it was released in 2023. This was supposedly also true for Activision's other game, Call of Duty: Warzone.
The latest court ruling comes as for decades now, competitive multiplayer video games have continued to suffer from a cheating plague. In particular, Call of Duty has had a major cheating and hacking problem, the most notable of which is Call of Duty: Warzone on PC.
The Legality of Video Game Cheats
Activision's legal victory against EngineOwning comes hot on the heels of Bungie, the creator of Destiny 2, also winning its lawsuit against another cheat maker, AimJunkies. The developer was awarded $63,210 in damages recently and the verdict was handed by a jury, not a judge, said GamesRadar.
In that particular case, however, it was reported that another company, Phoenix Digital, which is AimJunkies' parent company, is planning to file a motion to have the verdict dismissed. It also plans to appeal the case if that motion is unsuccessful.
Activision's case comes as EngineOwning was initially founded in 2014 and provided people with a subscription-based model for access to its extensive library of cheat software. The Call of Duty developer argued that the popularity of its shooter game led to the creation of a secondary market for cheats.
The video game studio also claimed that cheats have resulted in a ruined game experience for those players who maintained their integrity and did not use any cheats. These are people who either quit or eventually turned to competing games that were not plagued by cheaters, according to WindowsCentral.
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