Competitive gaming organization E-Sports Entertainment has agreed to a $1 million settlement in a consumer protection complaint filed by the state of New Jersey, announced the office of the state's attorney general today.

The complaint alleges that E-Sports Entertainment, which is based in Commack, N.Y., used malicious code embedded in its anti-cheat software to illegally monitor users' computers and to hijack the computers to mine for Bitcoins.

According to the complaint, which you can read in full here, E-Sports Entertainment developers created the code and ran it from mid-April 2013 to the end of the month. During that two-week period, the company used the software to take control of the computers of approximately 14,000 E-Sports Entertainment users to form a botnet. Using that network of computers, E-Sports Entertainment allegedly mined for Bitcoins to the tune of about $3,500.

The complaint also alleges that starting in early April, E-Sports Entertainment deployed code that let the company access and monitor users' machines, even when the anti-cheat software wasn't running. The code allegedly gave E-Sports Entertainment "full administrative access" to the computers, allowing the company to capture screenshots, track mouse movements and monitor other activities even when users weren't logged into E-Sports Entertainment servers.

The code allegedly gave E-Sports Entertainment "full administrative access" to users' computers

"Consumers who subscribed to E-Sports' video game anti-cheat services paid for protection from cheaters — not to be cheated by the very services they'd purchased," said Christopher S. Porrino, director of the Division of Law at the New Jersey Attorney General's office, in a press release today. E-Sports Entertainment charges a $6.95 monthly fee for its services.

Under the terms of the settlement, E-Sports Entertainment agrees not to put software on its users' computers without their consent, and will add a page to its website that's dedicated to laying out the specific data it collects, the ways in which it collects that data and how it uses the information. In addition, the company is submitting itself to biennial security and privacy audits from a third-party company through 2023.

E-Sports Entertainment will pay $350,000 of the $1 million settlement now to New Jersey, and if the company stays clean for the next 10 years, the remaining $650,000 of the fine will be vacated. The company is also the target of a similar lawsuit, a class-action complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court this past July. Its co-owner admitted to the allegations and apologized in May.

We're reaching out to E-Sports Entertainment for more details, and will update this article with any information we receive.

Update: E-Sports Entertainment issued Polygon with the following response to the state of New Jersey's announcement earlier today: