Games

For something like cheating and streaming your exploits on Twitch, it makes sense for a suit like this. Bungie’s reputation would suffer even more due to his audience being much more likely to seek out cheating tools, to associate the game with cheating, and to spread both those pieces of information themselves.

In a case where the damages are real and not contrived, copyright feels a bit more legit.

$500k feels extreme, though, even in this case. Is this based off real sales, stock prices, or back of the napkin math? Maybe mark it down to his scale of income. So they have $100 million in annual ebitda (and excluding any funny business like stock buybacks) and he makes $50k before taxes but after living expenses. That $500k is worth 1/600th of their annual income and so should be 1/600th of his: $250. Multiply that by as much as 10 due to the severity of his actions (or divide by as much as 10) and you’ve got $2500 in damages. Much more reasonable.

Bit rough going the opposite way, but fair’s fair.