A raft of lawsuits from the games industry seeks to crack down on cheating in some popular online games, arguing that making cheats for games and even using them might be illegal.

Why it matters: Cheating is a scourge of many online games, inspiring increasingly bold legal counteroffensives by some of the companies who make them.

• Those lawsuits are largely aimed against makers of cheat software, but they don’t let players who use the cheats fully off the hook.
• Cheat-makers “induce and enable individual Destiny 2 players to create an unauthorized and infringing derivative work each time they deploy the cheat software,” states one lawsuit from Sony-owned Bungie Studios that’s still winding its way through the courts.

Be smart: The kinds of cheats in play aren’t the ones old-school gamers might have applied by inputting a developer-programmed invincibility code.

• Rather, they involve premium cheats that let players see through walls to get an advantage in multiplayer combat games such as Destiny 2 or Call of Duty.

Game companies, many of which are banning tens and hundreds of thousands of accounts, say cheating scares off honest players and is costly to fight.

• Bungie estimated in one suit that it spends “roughly $1,250,000 per year on its anti-cheating measures,” not including legal costs.

The big picture: Game companies definitely detest cheating but have been careful to focus their firepower on cheat-makers, possibly because targeting more cheaters themselves with lawsuits could be costly, backfire in court or just rankle players as heavy-handed.

• Cheat-making is a big business, not quite as lucrative as making a blockbuster game, but a revenue generator that game publishers want to throttle.
• One cheat-seller sued by Bungie still sells cheats for dozens of games, including an “aimbot” for Call of Duty that can be used for $13/day or one for Valorant at $85/month.

Winning streak: Game companies scored several legal victories in 2022 against cheat-makers.

• In June, Destiny-maker Bungie won a $13.5 million settlement against a cheat-maker who, in turn, helped unmask others Bungie continues to pursue.
• In November, another group of cheat-makers sued by Bungie and Ubisoft agreed to settle.
• Also last month, an Australian judge ordered a cheat-maker in that country, who was sued back in 2018, to pay Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive AU $130,000.

Between the lines: Most cheating suits from big publishers claim that cheats that alter the game amount to copyright infringement, both when they’re made and when a player uses them.

• A cheat that draws a box around an opposing player, who would otherwise be hidden from view, is creating unauthorized derivative works, suits from Bungie and others claim.

Pushback: Most defendants in the cheating cases have no-showed or folded, agreeing to damages and settling. But Bungie has encountered feisty resistance throughout 2022 from purported cheat-makers Phoenix Digital.

• “‘Cheating in Destiny’ is not, in and of itself, unlawful,” the group’s lawyer said in a court filing back in January.
• The increasingly wild case has included Phoenix Digital's countersuing Bungie for allegedly violating its terms of service in September and the judge dismissing claims on both sides that were since refiled with more specifics.

The bottom line: Companies aren’t showing that they have an appetite to sue garden-variety cheaters, but the lawsuits are designed to serve as a warning shot to those who think cheating in an online game can be consequence-free.

Amazon will publish and help develop the next game in the renowned Tomb Raider franchise, the company said today.

Why it matters: It's one of Amazon's boldest steps yet into the big-budget video game industry.

• It comes a little more than a year after it would have been reasonable to write off Amazon's decade-long effort to crack into the games industry as a failure.

Driving the news: Development of the new multiplatform game will be led by longtime franchise studio Crystal Dynamics and is described as "a single-player, narrative-driven adventure that continues Lara Croft’s story,” according to an announcement from Amazon.

• The game was teased in April with the announcement that Crystal Dynamics would be building it with Epic Games' new Unreal Engine 5.

The big picture: For years, Amazon seemed to be going the way of Google Stadia, in terms of spending big and crashing hard in the games industry.

• Until 2021, Amazon's in-house game studios produced few releases, let alone any hits.
• But last year's internally developed massively multiplayer online game New World posted strong player numbers, and Amazon's effort to bring Korean game Lost Ark to the West was well-received.
• Last week, the company announced plans to serve as the Western publisher for Bandai Namco Online's Blue Protocol. Amazon has two other external publishing deals, and its studios in Montreal and San Diego are working on unannounced projects.
• The company's gaming strategy now clearly will mix traditional game development and publishing (à la Activision, EA or Ubisoft) with the operation of its industry-leading live-streamer service Twitch and its nascent game-streaming platform Luna.

A recent report from the Anti-Defamation League about the rise of extremism in online game communities has stirred a response from members of Congress.

Driving the news: Seven Democratic members, including Reps. Lori Trahan of Massachusetts and Katie Porter of California and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, are co-signing a letter that will be sent to top game companies tomorrow, requesting information about how they deal with reports of extremism.

• “We are writing to better understand the processes you have in place to handle player reports of harassment and extremism encounters in your online games, and ask for consideration of safety measures pertaining to anti-harassment and anti-extremism,” the letter states.
• The co-authors cite the ADL's study that found a rise of extremism in online gaming communities, including a doubling of users’ exposure to white supremacy since 2021.

Between the lines: The letter, shared with Axios today, requests information about the companies' mitigation efforts to combat extremism, the systems they have in place to fight it, details about the size of teams and investments made to address the issue and whether the companies are open to regularly releasing data on disciplinary actions taken against players for inappropriate behavior.

• The letter will be sent to Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Epic, Innersloth, Microsoft, PUBG Corp, Riot Games, Roblox, Sony, Square, Take-Two Interactive, Tencent, Ubisoft and Valve.

What they’re saying: “When we talk about holding technology companies accountable for what they’re pushing toward our kids, gaming companies must be a part of that conversation,” Trahan told Axios in an emailed statement.

• Game companies aren’t obligated to reply to the letter, but Trahan says she’s watching.
• “Make no mistake — parents like me with young kids are going to be paying attention to how they respond.”

📝 The poem that appears for players who complete Minecraft’s story mode has entered the public domain and is not owned by Minecraft owner Microsoft, Eurogamer reports.

📅 Warner Bros.’ much-delayed Harry Potter game Hogwarts Legacy will now have three release dates: one for new consoles and PC (February), one for the older PlayStation and Xbox (April) and one for the extra time needed to figure out how to get it to run on Switch (July).

⚖️ Microsoft president Brad Smith previewed some of his company’s response to the FTC’s attempt to block its Activision deal in a meeting with investors this week, saying that even if Microsoft made Call of Duty exclusive, rival Sony PlayStation would still have a 286-60 advantage in exclusive games.

🎶 Epic Games is shutting down servers for a slew of older games, including The Beatles: Rock Band and some older versions of Unreal Tournament.

💪 The control of professional wrestling video game licenses in the late 1990s and early 2000s was complicated by alleged bribery and kickbacks, according to a deep dive in Wrestling Inc.

Next week will be as quiet as it gets in the world of games.

• Look for Microsoft to file its response to the FTC's Activision complaint.
• And will one of 2017's Switch indie darlings, Golf Story, finally see its sequel released? Sports Story is slated for December 2022, but we're quickly running out of the month.

The third big game I’ll wind up completing with my kids this year is Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD (played 37 hours on Switch).

• We’ve had a shockingly good time.

Catch-up quick: Loyal Axios Gaming readers know the plot. I hid the existence of games from my kids until this summer, by which they were 5½ and further avoidance seemed futile.

• I love games but didn’t want them to get too sucked in too early.
• We played through a multiplayer Kirby game and loved it, played through a single-player Zelda too, as I discovered that they liked taking turns and offering verbal help when off the controller.

Yes, but Skyward Sword seemed foolhardy at first.

• It requires players to control a character in three dimensions and utilize precise motion controls, neither of which they’d done.

We struggled early, not just because of the controls but because the game has soooo much talking in its first several hours.

• They were bored.
• But we kept playing thanks to the great design of the game’s dungeons, the option to let dad take the controls for tricky parts, their mutual delight at shaking the controller to swing a sword and my daughter’s desire to see Link and Zelda finally hug.

Just one remaining hitch: They still aren’t great with right stick camera control. That really is the toughest thing for a new gamer to learn.