Cheaters are one of the biggest problems in Call of Duty and especially the free Battle Royale CoD: Warzone suffers from cheating players. Now the publisher Activision is taking on a major cheat provider and has sued “EngineOwning”.
Here’s what it’s about:
- Call of Duty: Warzone is a free “Battle Royale” shooter and has been struggling with cheaters in the game for some time.
- Cheat providers develop and distribute programs that allow players to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors. This violates the terms of use and copyright of Call of Duty.
- One of the most well-known providers of such programs in Germany is EngineOwning. Activision has now filed a lawsuit against the cheat provider in the USA.
Activision seeks all profits or $2,500 per cheater
On January 4, 2022, Activision filed a lawsuit against the cheat provider EngineOwning in a California court in the USA. You can view the complete complaint here (via documentcloud.com).
The complaint explains on 21 pages how Call of Duty generates profits, what impact cheats have on the series’ games, and to what extent possible legal violations have occurred.
Activision claims to have lost millions of dollars in revenue, which has led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for EngineOwning. The court is now expected to determine the respective amounts.
The plaintiffs assume that EngineOwning operates from Germany and at least 5 individuals with German residence are partially named and listed in the complaint.
On what basis is the lawsuit based? Since cheating and fraud in video games are not legally prohibited, the accusation is based on copyright violations and breaches of the terms of use.
How much is Activision suing the cheat provider for? In the text, there are 2 bases for a possible calculation of damages:
- Activision seeks all profits from the distribution of the programs
- Activision seeks $2,500 (approximately €2,200) per sold product in the jurisdiction
Furthermore, it states that Activision estimates at least “thousands of players” residing in the USA who use or have used cheat programs from EngineOwning. Even with “only” 2,000 users (the minimum value of “thousands”), that would amount to $5 million (approximately €4.2 million).
Additionally, Activision wants all information regarding sales from EngineOwning in the USA, as well as all copies of the distributed cheat programs.
What happens next? The matter goes to court and it must be clarified whether and to what extent damage has occurred:
- In previous lawsuits against cheat providers of Call of Duty, there has not yet been a trial – even large providers have voluntarily shut down their services to avoid a trial.
- However, EngineOwning has not yet commented on this on its official channels. We from MeinMMO have requested a statement but have not received a response yet.
- If the provider goes offline, cheat programs for Battlefield, Halo, or Splitgate would likely be affected as well.
However, it remains to be seen whether the accusation is also lawful. The presumption of innocence applies until conviction.
Blizzard sued a bot provider from Germany a few years ago:
WoW: German bot manufacturer Bossland sounds surprisingly depressed
