Riot Games and Bungie have decided to work together in the ongoing crusade of both companies against people who make and sell scams for their games. They filed a joint complaint against Cameron Santos, the owner of several scam distribution platforms, including Gatorcheats.
“[Riot Games and Bungie] seeks to put an end to the illegal, for-profit sale and distribution of malicious software designed to enable members of the public to gain unfair competitive advantage in the Games (namely, in order to deceive) and therefore to affect and destroy the applicants ‘games, the applicants’ general activity and the experience of the applicants ‘gaming community’, the complaint, first reported by Polygon, read. Riot and Bungie are seeking to close Gatorcheats and other cheating operations, as well as recover the financial damage they claim could be “millions of dollars.”
Problems of deception have recently grown into many online games, with Riot’s ASSESSMENT and Bungie’s Destiny 2 being two of the most visible examples. Deception has become a major problem in ASSESSMENT before the game leaves beta, while Destiny 2 saw an increase in urgency around allegations of fraud since its highly competitive mode Trials of Osiris returned last year.
Tricks in online shooters can run the gamut from instant respawns to teleportation or aimbots. “The best Destiny 2 cheating that money can buy, ”reads a description of a $ 135 product that has since been removed from the Gatorcheats website. „3 months access to our undetected ESP, aimbot, radar, speedhack, flyhack, noclip, instant respawn, teleport and teleport instant kill cheat / hack (in game mode menu) for Destiny 2. ”A ASSESSMENT Cheat still listed in the Gatorcheats store includes a month of customizable aimbots, recoil control and ESP hacks (letting players see opponents through the walls) for sale for $ 90.
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In September last year, Gatorcheats was hit with cessation and giving up of Activision Blizzard. The following month, Bungie sent one colleagues selling scammers PerfectAim. It is unclear how successful this long-term legal blow will be or whether it will act as a sufficient deterrent to discourage other scam sellers from setting up shop. In some cases where companies have tried too aggressively to regulate exploits in their games, players have occasionally pushed themselves with privacy issues. When ASSESSMENT first appeared its anti-cheat software Riot Vanguard ran all the time on players’ computers, whether they had the game open or not. After weeks of side effects, Riot finally gave up and gave players the option to stop it when the game was not running.
Riot Games, Bungie and Gatorcheats did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Kotaku.
Update – 15:36 ET, 11.01.2021: A Riot spokesman provided the following statement:
Cheating undermines the competitive integrity of a game and erodes community trust. Riot is fully committed to upholding these values for players, so when we become aware of a scam producer, we bet we’ll go after them.