Call of Duty cheat developers punished with 3 million Dollar fine

Call of Duty cheat developers punished with 3 million Dollar fine

23. February 2023 by Andrew Williams

A court has now ordered two Call of Duty cheat developers to pay millions of dollars in damages to Activision. Two people responsible for Call of Duty cheat developer EngineOwning have been ordered to pay hefty damages to Activision. They developed various cheats for several Activision-Blizzard games, including Warzone 2. Finally, there is some justice.

3 million dollar fine

In a verdict dated February 13, 2023, two defendants, Manuel Santiago and Ignacio Gayduchenko, were ordered to pay Activision $1 million and $2 million, respectively. It also says that as of now, the two are prohibited from “developing cheats that are sold to the public to exploit, cheat, manipulate, gain unfair advantage” and “circumvent technical measures” in a variety of games, including several CoD titles such as CoD: Vanguard, Warzone Caldera, MW2, Warzone 2 and others. It’s unclear how much EngineOwning profited from the cheats it created, but they were sold on a website in recent years.

EngineOwning offers players a service that gives access to various cheats such as aimbots, wallhacks, radar and other add-ons that help hide the cheats. The lawsuit was filed by Activision last January. As recently as this month, EngineOwning advertised a cheat that could crash entire game lobbies in Warzone 2 with just the press of a button. Warzone in particular has had a difficult history with cheaters, largely because it’s a free-to-play game. But Activision has made tremendous strides in curbing cheat issues with its RICOCHET anti-cheat system, though never with 100% success. Hacking is still a problem in CoD, especially in Modern Warfare 2’s new ranked mode.

Already accused a year ago

In recent years, cheats have become rampant in Call of Duty titles. That’s why Activision filed a lawsuit against EngineOwning a year ago. “Through this lawsuit, Activision seeks to stop the unlawful conduct of an organization that distributes and sells for profit numerous malicious software products to enable members of the public to gain unfair competitive advantages in COD games (i.e., cheat),” Activision wrote. “These ongoing activities are damaging to Activision’s games, its overall business, and the experience of the COD gaming community.”

The sued cheat coders “EngineOwning” produce various cheats for different games, all of the first person shooters, such as Splitgate, Battlefield and Halo Infinite. The lawsuit claims that EngineOwning was aware that its behavior was disrupting the contracts Activision has with its customers in the United States, but it went ahead anyway. It’s pretty damn cheeky when a company like that can advertise its cheats on Twitter as well, but hopefully now a stop will be put to it.