Yet another cheat provider has been cooked in court today after a Californian judge ruled in favor of Activision, with the Call of Duty giant demanding over $14 million in damages from EngineOwning following the conclusion of a suit filed in 2022.
EngineOwning must pay $14,465,600—$200 per cheat downloaded—in damages, according to a May 28 court order issued by U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald and shared by CharlieINTEL on X (formerly Twitter). The ruling ends the case filed back in 2022, with owners of the site ordered to pay the eight-digit sum of damages and over $290,000 in legal fees and must also hand over the website’s domain. Ultimately, the motion for default judgment was passed as the alleged individuals all but ghosted the case.
EngineOwning provides cheats and hacks for various titles, but the bulk of its clientele has been entrenched in CoD dating back to the site’s founding in 2014. Over a dozen defendants were called directly, with figures revealing over 72,000 users had downloaded and used hacks in CoD from the site. It’s unclear what Activision intends to do with the site, but it likely won’t remain up for much longer.
Activision’s win is yet another warning to cheat makers and providers that developers and publishers won’t go quietly into the night and ignore the hacking epidemic forever. Outside of developing better anti-cheat technology, devs are actively pursuing sites that distribute cheats. Just this week, Bungie scored a multi-million dollar win in court over AimJunkies to go with its lawsuit against Ring-1 back in 2023. Riot Games is also in the mix, banding together with Bungie to go after multiple other cheating sites.
It’s far from the end of cheating in CoD—which will forever be a problem players and developers alike will need to face—but Activision is aiming for the head. To those who continue to create or provide hacks: You’ve been warned.
