It was more than a year ago that Bungie sought legal action against a particularly troublesome cheater in Destiny 2. This individual was charged with acting maliciously in Bungie’s then-flagship title, using cheats to disrupt the game but also taking it offline and harassing Bungie staff on social media. This cheater, Luca Leone, went so far as to threaten to burn down Bungie’s offices, and now a document that has been uncovered suggests he’s landed himself a $500,000 fine and a solid ‘permaban’.
Allegedly, Leone now faces a ban from every single Bungie property – past, present, and future. On top of that, he’s facing a fine that could be as much as $500,000 when all is said and done. He’s accused of carrying out ‘at least’ 100 acts of circumvention of Bungie’s anti-cheating framework, and each one of those trespasses carries with it a $2,000 penalty. There’s also a sizeable base fine of $300,000 that’s being imposed for the initial copyright infringement case.
It Gets This Serious
Image Credit: Bungie
This should be a global advertisement for how seriously some developers and publishers take cheating in their games. It’s fast becoming a publicised criminal offence, and in recent years, the likes of Bungie have been working hard to clamp down on cheat providers. Now, things are getting more granular, and developers are targeting individual cheaters themselves. It could be argued that if Leone hadn’t acted so aggressively, he would have been able to pass under the wire, but here he is today, facing a $500,000 fine.
In the document that was uncovered, dated September 1st, the charges and fines are outlined, but it doesn’t look like a court has signed off on them just yet.
It’s one of the most comprehensive cases of its kind, with the prosecution having been dragged out for more than a year at this point. In the proposed outcome, Leone would be restricted from travelling within 1000 feet of a Bungie office or coming anywhere close to any home address of a Bungie employee. This is based on his hyper-aggressive behaviour around some of Bungie’s staff in the past, including an incident where he posted the identity card of a community manager online and stressed that the individual ‘was not safe’.
Related: Sony Acquires Bungie for $3.6 Billion
Bungie Doesn’t Play Games
Last year, Bungie kicked off a spree of lawsuits against cheat makers and those using them with reckless abandon. In June 2022, the developer zeroed in on a group of cheat makers, lumping them with a lawsuit that saw Bungie attempt to claim almost $14 million in damages. Before that, Bungie went on a different kind of warpath, targeting those maliciously circumventing DMCA strikes on YouTube to post and share copyrighted content.
Bungie isn’t alone in this type of action – historically, the likes of Activision, Valve, Ubisoft, and Rockstar have all taken to the courts to face off against cheaters and those who provide said cheats.
Time will tell what the ultimate outcome of the Bungie v. Luca Leone case is.
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