Following legal proceedings taken by Rockstar Games owners Take-Two in August, a GTA Online cheat creator has been ordered to pay $150,000 by a judge. Take-Two has not been shy about going after the creators of cheating programs recently and this is another case of them successfully dispatching a user costing them money.
According to TorrentFreak, the sizeable sum was awarded when the court found that a Florida resident named Jhonny Perez had infringed on Take-Two’s copyright. Perez’s GTA Online cheat was called “Elusive” and enabled players to use unauthorized mods and “grief” others.
As the ever-growing popularity of online games continues to soar, companies like Epic Games and Rockstar Games’ parent company have cast their nets wide to find cheat makers who violate their copyright. In October, Take-Two successfully requested an Australian federal court to freeze the assets of the creators behind the “Infamous” cheat.
Take-Two appeared to be open to a settlement in this case but dropped that course of action when they received no reply from Perez’s side. Perez also refused to provide documents to Take-Two, which would have better indicated how much monetary damage he had caused.
Unfortunately, Perez did not reply to the case, nor did he hand over any financial records as requested. This is despite selling the cheat software for up to $30.
Take-Two actually argued damages up to $500,000 were incurred by the “Elusive” cheat. However, Perez escaped being fined that amount as $150,000 is the maximum pay-out for copyright infringement damages in New York federal court. This is a total that is to be handed down if a default judgment (i.e. no reply from the defendant) was reached. Perez must also pay over $60,000 in legal costs.
The matter now appears to be closed. The judge issued an injunction to stop further infringing activities by the Florida man with the software already being taken offline as of 2018.
