A federal court has awarded Activision £11.3m ($14.4m) after it ruled in favour of the publisher’s lawsuit against cheat makers EngineOwning and Garnatz Enterprise Ltd, and 11 individual people.
As spotted by VentureBeat, the lawsuit, which was filed at the beginning of 2022, accuses the companies and individuals – Valentin Rick, Leonard Bugla, Leon Frisch, Marc-Alexander Richts, Alexander Kleeman, Leon Schlender, Bennet Huch, Ricky Szameitat, Remo Loffler, Charlie Wiest and Pascal Classen – of profiting from cheats and giving an unfair competitive advantage to players prepared to pay for auto-aim and auto-fire software cheats.
At the time, Activision said it sought “to put a stop to unlawful conduct by an organisation that is distributing and selling for profit numerous malicious software products designed to enable members of the public to gain unfair competitive advantages”, and described EngineOwning as a “German business entity… engaged in the development, sale, distribution, marketing, and exploitation of a portfolio of malicious cheats and hacks for popular online multiplayer games, most prominently the COD Games”.