Activision Publishing, a division of Activision Blizzard, filed a lawsuit against EngineOwning, a website that sells cheats for Call of Duty games and other popular online shooters, on Tuesday, attempting to stop players from cheating in any Activision-published game.
“By this lawsuit, Activision seeks to put a stop to unlawful conduct by an organization that is distributing and selling for profit numerous malicious software products designed to enable members of the public to gain unfair competitive advantages (i.e., to cheat) in the COD Games,” Activision said. “These ongoing activities damage Activision’s games, its overall business, and the experience of the COD player community.”
According to the lawsuit, “the Cheating Software enables players to manipulate the COD Games to their advantage, such as by automatically aiming weapons, revealing the locations of opponents, and allowing the player to see information that is not normally available to players because it would give them an unfair advantage within the game.” The company says it believes the defendants “have been fully aware that their conduct violates Activision’s rights but have brazenly continued their activities.”
The lawsuit identifies 50 “Doe defendants,” and while it mentions the presumed identity of several EngineOwning employees, it admits that “the genuine names and capacities, whether individual, corporate, associate or otherwise, of the Doe defendants are unknown to Activision.”
Activision has been putting in a lot of effort recently to combat cheaters in Call of Duty games, with a special focus on the highly popular — and free to play — Call of Duty: Warzone. In December, the firm announced that it had banned 48,000 “cheater accounts” thanks to its new Ricochet anti-cheat system, which was rolled out internationally in Warzone. Activision claims that in just over a year, it has “been able to detect and remove hundreds of thousands of accounts utilizing cheating software in the COD Games.” (This is most likely referring to the year 2021.)
EngineOwning’s Twitter account did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent via Twitter DM. It hasn’t made any mention of the lawsuit on that account, and its website is still up and running as of this writing.
Activision Blizzard is currently involved in controversy following a lawsuit filed by the state of California, alleging that the company fostered a culture of “continuous sexual harassment” and gender discrimination. Some Raven Software employees are on strike for the third week in a row, protesting the company’s sudden layoffs of QA employees. Raven Software is best known for its work on Call of Duty.
