In March 2022, there was much concern in the Destiny 2 community. Unjustified copyright strikes threatened the existence of numerous YouTubers and harmed Bungie’s reputation. However, it quickly became clear that a fraudster was at work. Now Bungie has revealed the name of the suspect – and has sued him for a hefty sum.
The key points summarized:
- In March 2022, there was a lot of concern in the Destiny 2 community. Numerous YouTubers in the loot shooter genre were unexpectedly hit by copyright strikes.
- Not only the biggest names in the community, such as Aztecross or Paul Tassi, were affected – Bungie itself also fell victim to these DMCA reports.
- Copyright strikes can lead to videos or even entire YouTube channels being removed from the platform.
- This poses a potentially existential threat to content creators who earn their income on the video site.
- Today, Bungie has revealed the likely culprit. The name became known from documents submitted by Bungie to a court.
- The developer is suing a YouTuber for 7.2 million euros in damages, claiming that his actions have caused “nearly incalculable damage.”
YouTuber likely sought revenge for deletion of his own channel
Who is the alleged culprit? The perpetrator is said to be YouTuber Nicholas ‘Lord Nazo’ Minor, who wanted to take “revenge” on the developer of Destiny 2 and has publicly targeted videos on YouTube – sometimes with success.
Using fake email addresses, he pretended to be two employees of CSC. This is a copyright protection company that aims to protect Bungie’s intellectual property (such as the brand ‘Destiny’). So ‘disguised,’ he was able to harm other YouTubers in Bungie’s name.
Former friends of Nazo further revealed that he explained exactly what he was doing on Discord. He complained about how easy it was to spam fake takedown notifications.
In this video about Destiny 2, you can get a behind-the-scenes look and meet some developers at Bungie:
What are the alleged motives? As Bungie explains in the lawsuit, Lord Nazo’s motive was “revenge.” The documents describe the situation as follows:
Lord Nazo had previously uploaded “Destiny 2” music to his channel, which was then swept up by a wave of DMCA takedowns. Bungie and CSC took action against several channels.
As journalist Paul Tassi writes, this decision was highly controversial in the community at the time, but in most cases, the videos were deleted without further consequences. However, Nazo refused to take down his video, and eventually, YouTube deleted it for him.
He then uploaded new music from The Witch Queen to his YouTube channel, prompting Bungie and CSC to respond again. After a total of 23 violations, his channel was eventually deleted altogether.
As his own existence was threatened, the YouTuber sought revenge. By pretending to file such notices for Bungie, he was able to enforce 96 copyright strikes against other YouTubers and even Bungie.
This was possible because YouTube allows anyone to submit such complaints. There is no requirement to prove that the submitter of the complaint is actually the owner.
However, according to documents, Lord Nazo went a step further: he wanted to use this chaos to make it appear as if his takedowns were also part of this unjustified wave of fraud. He hoped that his channel would be restored. In a lengthy appeal to YouTube, he spoke about the situation he had orchestrated himself. His channel was not restored.
What are the consequences? Bungie was able to identify Lord Nazo by cross-referencing his YouTube and reddit accounts with his real name and IP addresses that created the fake email addresses. According to Tassi, his name also appears in a database of known cheaters.
Now Lord Nazo has been sued by Bungie for damages. The amount being discussed is 7.4 million dollars. They cite both attorney’s fees and the damage to Bungie’s reputation, as for a time, everyone believed that the copyright strikes against the community came from them.
However, it may take a long time before this trial is concluded. What happens in the meantime remains open. Recently, Bungie won another lawsuit:
Destiny 2 wins millions lawsuit against cheat providers – receives 1,900 euros for each cheater
