Digital Homicide has been thrown off Steam - UPDATE 2: Jim Sterling Lawsuit Formally Dismissed, and 40 minute Jimquisition on how much bullshit this entire lawsuit was.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Yeah, so this is something that's occured recently. You might remember the charming little company called Digital Homicide from Jim Sterling's videos:

You might also remember that they're currently trying to sue Jim Sterling for his videos on several of their games because he's made comments such as "They're more slippy than the wet bandits", and calling their games "absolute failures", as well as trying to claim that Jim is in the wrong for a mistake comment, which he then later fixed when he had the proper information. For those who don't know. Digital Homicide is a studio who seem to not have any regard for games. They rush out low budget titles made on Unity, with Unity Assets, and had a total breakdown at Sterling for simply criticizing their low budget efforts. To sum it up, you know how most people dislike Steam Greenlight for being a easy platform for shit games to break out onto the Steam Storefront, and it's one of the biggest problems with PC Gaming right now? Yeah, Digital Homicide can be the poster boys for that, with them essentially spamming Steam with low budget crap.

But today, Valve seems to have had the last straw with them. According to PC Gamer, Digital Homicide is attempting to sue random Steam users:

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Valve has delisted developer Digital Homicide's games from Steam, including Paranormal Psychosis, Gnarltoof's Revenge, and Krog Wars (pictured above). Yesterday, it came to light that the developer is suing 100 anonymous Steam users for $18 million, in response to comments those users had made about the company and its games on Steam. This comes on the heels of an ongoing lawsuit against critic Jim Sterling—who the developer is suing for $15 million—in response to a YouTube video of his blasting one of their games.

Later, TechRaptor managed to get in contact with Steam, which confirmed the delisting of any and all Digital Homicide titles was because of the company being hostile to Steam Customers. Because of that, the massive library Digital Homicide amassed over the two years it's been present has been completely wiped off Steam, and furthermore, all current Greenlight titles of theirs has also been wiped off Steam. The only things remaining is Steam Keys of their games will work, and if you previously bought their games, you'll still have them in your library. There's a community page still up, and even that's getting blasted with offensive comments. 

Here's a full 19 minute video that overcaps everything Digital Homicide has done

The real question is what's going to happen next with this company. As shown by Jim Sterling's Homicide video above, they've made fake development names before that were all revealed to be Digital Homicide trying to get more games up until that was uncovered, so only time will tell if this will stick. At the minute though, all of you PC gamers on SSMB can rest easy knowing that Steam, and Valve seems to be cracking down on shovelware.

Update 1: Case has been dismissed formally. Jim has won.

Update 2: Watch Jim fucking Sterling Son go over how silly this entire mess was in the first place.

 

 

[Speederino]

You know, if they're going to be suing people for defamation of character, they should probably be filing a lawsuit against themselves since they've been doing that all on their own for years. This is them getting their just desserts.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

Digital Homicide? More like Digital SUICIDE :D!

[Tara]

I'm glad to see Valve taking steps to protect its users.  Those kind of anti-consumer business practices have no places on a platform as open as Steam, let alone the video game industry in general.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

For those who want more info on the lawsuit against Steam Users:

 

[KHCast]

Jim hasn't even mentioned it on Twitter yet. I'm quite surprised.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Found the best video as of yet. A full 19 minute explanation of Digital Homicide, how their games are likely made, and all of their antics.

 

[Mad Convoy]

Yikes! With the lawsuits, desperation to lash out against the critics, lazy output, poor quality output, greed, and seriously inflated ego, DigiHomi sounds like what Ken Penders would be if he stopped trying to maintain the facade of being a friendly consumer and employee advocate and just showed his true colors all the time.

But seriously, suing consumers for making negative reviews? That's not going to get anywhere-- they should really look up the first amendment before hiring a lawyer, assuming that a lawyer even took their case and they're not representing themselves instead.

I hope the developer stays down, but given DigiHomi's history, they'll probably make sockpuppets and/or go IP hopping. Unfortunately, I don't think we've seen the last of those two, or their games.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Just now, Mad Convoy said:

Yikes! With the lawsuits, desperation to lash out against the critics, lazy output, poor quality output, greed, and seriously inflated ego, DigiHomi sounds like what Ken Penders would be if he stopped trying to maintain the facade of being a friendly consumer and employee advocate and just showed his true colors all the time.

But seriously, suing consumers for making negative reviews? That's not going to get anywhere-- they should really look up the first amendment before hiring a lawyer, assuming that a lawyer even took their case and they're not representing themselves instead.

I hope the developer stays down, but given DigiHomi's history, they'll probably make sockpuppets and/or go IP hopping. Unfortunately, I don't think we've seen the last of those two, or their games.

They're representing themselves in court. They tried to set up a GoFundMe page for 75K in legal costs, but I think we can all guess just how well that went down.

[Mad Convoy]

Just now, Ryannumber1gamer said:

They're representing themselves in court. They tried to set up a GoFundMe page for 75K in legal costs, but I think we can all guess just how well that went down.

Ah, that makes sense. I suppose only the most shameless and stupid of lawyers would take such a hopeless case like this, so they'd have to represent themselves.

And wow, they expected to be crowdfunded successfully? How egotistical are those two to think that people would still want to support them after all the stuff they put Jim Sterling and other critics through, not to mention their thorough flooding of Steam Greenlight with shovelware? 

[Tara]

13 minutes ago, Mad Convoy said:

But seriously, suing consumers for making negative reviews? That's not going to get anywhere-- they should really look up the first amendment before hiring a lawyer, assuming that a lawyer even took their case and they're not representing themselves instead.

The first amendment doesn't protect you from a private entity suing you for your words; it just means the government can't make an actual law prohibiting you from saying something.  But their suit holds no legal traction, regardless.

[Cobalt_Bolt]

Given that I have been following this train wreck for nearly two years it comes as no surprise that Digital Homicide finally got delisted from Steam. I think the reason that Mr. Sterling has not made too many mentions of Digital Homicide recently is that he is involved in a lawsuit against them and is under legal orders to not talk about the case until it is resolved.

[Tara]

11 minutes ago, Cobalt_Bolt said:

Given that I have been following this train wreck for nearly two years it comes as no surprise that Digital Homicide finally got delisted from Steam. I think the reason that Mr. Sterling has not made too many mentions of Digital Homicide recently is that he is involved in a lawsuit against them and is under legal orders to not talk about the case until it is resolved.

More importantly, when you're being sued, you don't want to give the plaintiffs something they can potentially use as a weapon.  It doesn't matter how obviously wrong the lawsuit is, the crazier it is, the more time-consuming and thus the more costly it's going to be.  I don't claim to know what goes on in the minds of these developers, but if I had to guess, I'm assuming this is probably what they're trying to do.  I don't think they're actually looking to gain anything monetarily; they're just trying to intimidate people.

Jim Sterling has financial backers and supporters through Patreon and YouTube monetization, so I'm confident that the courts will be on his side if it makes it to courts at all (from all the videos shown above, it's not likely, but stranger things have happened).  What scares me is the 100 users on Steam who may not be able to afford the court costs.  I hope they won't be forced  to pay out of pocket for any fees wrongly forced upon them.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

1 minute ago, Tara said:

More importantly, when you're being sued, you don't want to give the plaintiffs something they can potentially use as a weapon.  It doesn't matter how obviously wrong the lawsuit is, the crazier it is, the more time-consuming and thus the more costly it's going to be.  I don't claim to know what goes on in the minds of these developers, but if I had to guess, I'm assuming this is probably what they're trying to do.  I don't think they're actually looking to gain anything monetarily; they're just trying to intimidate people.

Jim Sterling has financial backers and supporters through Patreon and YouTube monetization, so I'm confident that the courts will be on his side if it makes it to courts at all (from all the videos shown above, it's not likely, but stranger things have happened).  What scares me is the 100 users on Steam who may not be able to afford the court costs.  I hope they won't be forced  to pay out of pocket for any fees wrongly forced upon them.

Well, we don't know for sure if they will get hit in this case. If Valve got rid of all Digital Homicide presence on it's storefront, it's more than likely they contested the order to reveal the users. If I had to guess anyway. 

[Tara]

2 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Well, we don't know for sure if they will get hit in this case. If Valve got rid of all Digital Homicide presence on it's storefront, it's more than likely they contested the order to reveal the users. If I had to guess anyway. 

I sure hope so, anyway, though I think Valve can be trusted a lot more than some other companies when it comes to protecting its users from this sort of abuse.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Just now, Tara said:

I sure hope so, anyway, though I think Valve can be trusted a lot more than some other companies when it comes to protecting its users from this sort of abuse.

Well, from the videos I've watched and the threads I've read on this, Valve has full right to contest the order of revealing their Steam users for this lawsuit, and considering the utter bullshit that innocent people can get sued for criticism would be more than enough reason for Valve to contest the order. Digital Homicide made the biggest mistake here, because they forget that not only can normal people uncover their shady business practices (as the Jimquistion video Homicide above shows), but Valve would be able to uncover far more, and then display that as full reason why they can't be trusted. Plus, the fact they removed all of their titles, off both Greenlight, and Steam itself shows they are very clearly against DH.

[Kaze no Klonoa]

1 hour ago, KHCast said:

Jim hasn't even mentioned it on Twitter yet. I'm quite surprised.

Jim Sterling already has mentioned it on Twitter and made ambiguous tweets on the matter, but in his situation he's not going to specifically mention anything about his lawsuit or will most likely be doing a Jimquisition video on that at the moment, and this is because it's at his best interest to keep his mouth shut while his own lawsuit is being sorted out.

[MightyRay]

I wonder if the goobers at YOLO Army will be on the chopping block, since they've been helping a lot of shovelware developers get on Steam through shady methods. Took Valve way too fucking long in my book to squash those fools, and their woeful behavior, especially when that poor polish developer ECC games got roped into that nonsense, thanks to one of DH's sockpuppet companies sharing the same name.  

[Mania Pipe]

It really is amazing that Digital Homicide tried to sue the Steam users and critics, just because they gave their games negative reviews. Their games are shit and they've been cranking these out within the span of months, so I think it's fair for that the people would give major criticisms towards their games. Digital Homicide should've learn from these criticisms and improve upon them in their games, but nope.

[Agie]

Careful, you might get sued for all these negative complaints.

Digital Homocide had it coming, I say. Only shocking thing is that it didn't come sooner. I hope they're not allowed anywhere near the industry ever again.

[Cobalt_Bolt]

53 minutes ago, SurrealBrain said:

Careful, you might get sued for all these negative complaints.

Digital Homocide had it coming, I say. Only shocking thing is that it didn't come sooner. I hope they're not allowed anywhere near the industry ever again.

 

I would not count out the number of copycat's that Digital Homicide inspired to push their shovelware onto Steam just yet. These are the types of people that rank up with used car salesmen, crummy politicians, and cockroach's in how there is always another one waiting to swoop in to pick up where they left off.

[Blacklightning]

You know, part of me is happy this happened, don't get me wrong. But I feel it's pretty telling that Valve only stepped in because DigiHom were being actively hostile towards their customers, and not because of the shady as fuck tactics they employed to get sales even when they weren't just straight up shovelwaring the fuck out of everything they did. All they've really shown is that they somewhat care about an image problem, not developers actively reselling games they didn't make or own, being Greenlit under false pretenses or just straight up voting for themselves in the process.

[Kaze no Klonoa]

Holy shit IT NEVER ENDS

http://letsplayvideogames.com/2016/09/digital-homicide-seeking-legal-representation-against-valve-after-steam-delisting/

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By removing us they have taken the stance that users have the right to harass me, tell me I should kill myself, and insult my family . If I try to defend myself against said actions then I lose my family’s income. If it wasn’t for 2 years of experience of dealing with Steam on a regular basis, this disgusting stance would seem shocking to me. The only thing that prevented me seeking legal counsel for a long list of breach of contracts, interference with business, and anti-trust issues was the fear of losing my family’s income. Since that has been taken away I am seeking legal representation. The case will benefit from a long list of organized documentation of events that have happened over the past 2 years including dates, screenshots, emails, and more on over 100 infractions in need of litigation.

not linking directly to their site because it is absolutely horrendous and is almost unusable on mobile.

(also why is this shit their family's only method of income and why are they throwing it away in a effort to chase lawsuits with cases that will not hold any grounds)

[Graystripe2000]

How much are you willing to bet that this doesn't make it through court?

[Speederino]

Part of me wants to see this somehow reach an actual courtroom, just so I can imagine the look on DH's faces when the case gets thrown out after three minutes.