Bungie sues Destiny 2 cheater who allegedly threatened to "burn down" their office

Bungie has filed a lawsuit against one Destiny 2 cheater, alleging that he not only broke the game's terms of service through cheating, but also made threats against the studio's offices and employees.

The lawsuit, filed on July 15 and brought to public attention today by TorrentFreak, alleges that Luca Leone, who goes by various handles on social media, regularly streamed himself using cheats in Destiny 2, and created multiple accounts to evade bans for violation of the game's Limited Software License Agreement, or LSLA, which Bungie describes as "serial fraud."

Bungie further alleges that Leone made threats against the studio on social media. The studio quotes one of Leone's tweets, in which he posted an image of an employee badge belonging to community manager Dylan Gafner, better known to fans as dmg. Leone followed up that tweet by saying "I just realized i'll be moving to a place that's 30 minutes away from dmg" and "he is not safe."

The studio also says Leone threatened to "burn down" the company's office building. In another tweet quoted in the lawsuit, one Twitter user openly asks if anyone is "able to commit arson at [a] later specified location in [an] area of Seattle." "I'm in Washington, DM me." Leone replies. "If it's Bungie HQ you get a discount."

Leone started deleting some of his tweets after receiving a request for comment from Kotaku, and has since made his account private.

Bungie asks the court to ensure that Leone "be preliminarily and permanently enjoined from harassing, stalking, or otherwise engaging in unwanted or unsolicited contact with Bungie, its employees, or Destiny 2 players."

The studio also says that "Leone infringed Bungie’s copyright in Destiny 2 as an audiovisual work each time that he used cheat software to create an unauthorized derivative work of Destiny 2." With that allegation of copyright infringement, Bungie asks for "statutory damages of $150,000 for each copyrighted work infringed," or "an amount to be proven at trial." The studio further asks that the court award damages in the amount of $2,500 for each time Leone used cheat software in the game.

Bungie has been taking bad actors in the Destiny 2 community to court with some regularity, suing the person behind the fraudulent DMCA takedown spree for $7.6 million, and settling with a group of cheat makers for $13.5 million.