Destiny 2 player has to pay nearly $500,000 for harassing community manager

Bungie scores a legal win that sets a precedent for the industry

Marco Wutz | Jul 13, 2023

Destiny 2 player has to pay nearly $500,000 for harassing community manager /

Bungie has successfully brought a lawsuit against a Destiny 2 player, who harassed one of the company’s community managers. According to the court documents, the perpetrator has to pay $489,435 to cover the damages his behavior has caused.

Apparently, the man was enraged by the fact that a Destiny 2 community campaign promoting artwork created by players highlighted the work of a fan of color. The documents explain how he got himself a new phone number for anonymous calling and rang up a community manager’s personal number to leave a racist message – something he continued to do regularly. He then asked the community manager to convince Bungie to add an option to the game that would allow users to only kill persons of color, the documents reveal.

The perpetrator went on to leave similarly threatening and racist messages on the personal phone number of the community manager’s wife. Going a step further, the man ordered a pizza to the community manager’s home, showing the couple that he knew where they lived.

Bungie at this point involved the police to provide protection for its employee’s family as it worked on identifying the suspect, filing a lawsuit as well as a restraining order once this was achieved.

The success of this lawsuit is of particular importance, because it might set a new precedent for situations of this sort – of which, unfortunately, there are likely to be repetitions. Essentially, this ruling recognizes that employers can enforce the recovery of damages done to employees, who were harassed due to their job, and themselves in civil court, according to paralegal Kathryn Tewson, who was involved with the case.

It also recognized – at least for the state of Washington – that cyber and telephone harassment are a tort. That’s a civil wrong that causes a claimant to suffer harm, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the act.

This potentially paves the way for more companies being able to protect their employees from similar harassment and threats.

Published Jul 13, 2023

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg