CoD Warzone is suing a large cheat provider from Germany – demands € 2,200 per cheater

Cheaters are one of the biggest problems in Call of Duty and especially the free Battle Royale CoD: Warzone suffers from cheating players. Now publisher Activision is tackling a large cheat provider and has sued “EngineOwning”.

This is what it’s about:

  • Call of Duty: Warzone is a free “Battle Royale” shooter and has had problems with cheaters in the game for a long time.
  • Cheat providers develop and sell programs with which players secure an unfair advantage against their competitors. Doing so is against the Call of Duty Terms of Service and copyright law.
  • One of the best-known providers of such programs in Germany is EngineOwning. Activision has now filed a lawsuit against the cheat provider in the USA.

Activision wants all winnings, or $ 2,500 per cheater

On January 4th, 2022, Activision filed a lawsuit against the cheat provider EngineOwning in a California court in the United States. You can see the complete application here (via documentcloud.com).

The complaint explains on 21 pages how Call of Duty achieves profits, what influence cheats have on the games in the series and to what extent possible legal violations have been committed.

Activision claims to have lost millions of dollars in sales that resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales for EngineOwning. The court should now determine how high the respective values ​​are.

Incidentally, the plaintiffs assume that EngineOwning operates from Germany and at least 5 people with German domicile are sometimes listed by name and place of residence in the script.

What is the basis of the lawsuit? Since cheating and cheating in video games are not prohibited by law, the charges are based on copyright infringement and violation of the Terms of Use.

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How much is Activision suing the cheat provider for? In the text, there are 2 bases for a possible compensation calculation:

  • Activision claims all profits from the distribution of the programs
  • Activision is asking for $ 2,500 per product sold in the jurisdiction

It also states that Activision assumes at least “thousands of players” residing in the USA who use or used Cheat programs from EngineOwning. Even with “only” 2,000 users (the minimum value of “thousands”) that would be a sum of 5 million dollars (approx. 4.2 million euros).

Activision also wants full information on EngineOwning sales in the United States, as well as all copies of the distributed cheat programs

How are things going now? The matter goes to court and it must be clarified whether and to what extent damage has occurred:

  • Earlier lawsuits against Call of Duty cheat providers have not yet led to a negotiation – even large providers have voluntarily given up their services to avoid legal proceedings.
  • However, EngineOwning has not commented on this on its official channels so far. We at MeinMMO have requested a statement, but have not received a response so far.
  • Should the provider go offline, cheat programs for Battlefield, Halo or Splitgate would also be affected.

However, it remains to be seen whether the indictment is also legal. The presumption of innocence applies before the conviction.

A few years ago, Blizzard sued a bot provider from Germany:

WoW: German bot manufacturer Bossland sounds surprisingly depressed

Reference-mein-mmo.de