Ubisoft is suing a teenage Rainbow Six Siege cheat-maker, claiming the company was forced to spend “enormous sums of money” trying to mitigate their impact on the game.
As reported by Polygon, Ubisoft’s recent legal proceedings are aimed at MizuSoft, a company run by a minor referred to only as JVL in the lawsuit, believed to be located in the Netherlands.
Ubisoft claims that the MizuSoft is making “hundreds of thousands of dollars” by selling cheats that “[ruin] the experience for other players”, violate its copyright, and encourage player to breach its terms of use and code of conduct.
Ubisoft has struggled to stem the tide of cheaters in Rainbow Six Siege since its launch in 2015. In 2016, it updated the game’s code of conduct, introducing a permanent ban on first offense for cheating and hacking. Then, in 2018, it highlighted the severity of the problem, announcing that it had suspended 1,300 Rainbow Six Siege cheaters – in a single week.
According to Ubisoft’s lawsuit, cheaters have paid to use MizuSoft’s services “thousands of times,” causing “massive and irreparable harm” to its business interests, and forcing it to spend “enormous sums of money (and vast amounts of time) attempting to remediate the damage”.
MizuSoft, meanwhile, has reportedly made “hundreds of thousands of dollars from their distribution of, and sale of licenses to, the Cheating Software.”
MizuSoft’s site is no longer available at the time of writing, simply showing a message that it “will be ceasing operations as of October 24th, 2019”. According to PC Gamer, however, it was previously selling cheats that could boost weapon damage, reveal hidden enemies, and more for €12 (£10) per day, €30 (£26) per week, or €70 (£60) per month.
Ubisoft notes that JVL recently “bragged to the media that his Cheating Software ruins R6S for other players” (seemingly in reference to an appearance in a BBC news report), and is seeking a shutdown of the cheat software and MizuSoft’s websites, payment of legal fees and damages, and more. Polygon has the full legal document on its site for the especially curious.
