YouTuber Lord Nazo (real name Nicholas Minor) has been accused of creating fake Bungie-affiliated email addresses to send DMCA notices to other YouTubers after his own Destiny 2 videos were removed. Upon discovering this, Bungie has filed a lawsuit for 7.6 million dollars.
As reported by PCGamesN, Minor received a takedown notice from Bungie’s brand protector CSC Global in December 2021 after sharing the Destiny 2 Taken King soundtrack on his channel. Minor ignored this notice and kept the videos, for which YouTube removed them in January. Minor then created a new email that mimicked CSC Global employees.
This happened again in February after Minor shared the soundtrack for The Witch Queen expansion, prompting another takedown notice and another fake email address from CSC. With these, Minor “began sending out a wave of fraudulent takedown notices,” as Bungie’s filing states. Bungie believes the intent was to tarnish his reputation in the Destiny community out of spite for the takedown notices.
For damages, Bungie is seeking $7.6 million, or $150,000 “for each of the works implicated in the Fraudulent Takedown Notice.” And Bungie claims that Minor sent out 96 takedown notices on behalf of the studio before this came to light.
“This caused financial and reputational damage to Bungie for obvious reasons. As explained below, the Destiny community was baffled and upset, believing that Bungie had reneged on its promise to allow players to create their own streaming communities and channels from YouTube in Destiny 2 content.
“Members of the Destiny community were also misled into believing that Bungie’s brand protection agent was also fraudulent, leading to confusion among users as to the authenticity of legitimate DMCA notices. Bungie had to spend significant internal resources to fix it and help your players restore their videos and channels.”
However, Minor has yet to publicly comment on the last Twitch VOD they shared two years ago, while their last YouTube video is from a year ago. With no active Twitter, there are also no written posts addressing these claims.
