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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

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I'm just waiting for the part where Steam points out in their terms of service that they hold the right to delist a developer that causes damage to their platform though the release of shovel ware titles and acting hostile to their player base. 

And what contracts? Their games got on Steam through Greenlight lol, pretty sure there wouldn't be crap tons of contracts and breaches. There most certainly would be breaches by bullying customers, and manipulating the Greenlight system to get their games onto it.

TL;DR: RIP Digital Homicide 

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1 hour ago, 风之Klonoa said:

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 .

(Note for anyone viewing this out of context, IPB decided to attribute the quote to Klonoa, but it's actually a quote within his post from the developers, not Klonoa himself.  Just wanted to clarify that so that can of worms doesn't open and spill all over the place)

Okay, so real talk, I totally 100% agree that this is a thing Valve, and the online gaming scene in general, need to work on.  Cyberbullying sucks and no matter how lousy the games are, no one deserves to be tormented and have their psyche messed with.  (Should go without saying, though, that I don't know if we can verify that any of the allegations listed above are true, however.)  It's why, despite my absolute loathing of Rise of Lyric as a game, I still have massive respect for the developers and I really feel sorry for the amount of shite they get from abrasive nerds.

BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, if you are claiming to be a professional businessman, and you find that you even have the time to care about what people say on the internet about you, you probably don't have any place running a business.  Like, I'm sure there is much better use for your time than focusing on a Steam group who supposedly live to do nothing but make nasty comments, especially if you're already presumably getting their money anyway (considering they probably have to buy the games in order to comment on them).

But yeah, I'm not surprised they're going to try to sue Valve.  But lol at the thought they think they can win.  If they can't get a lawyer of their own, they sure as hell stand no chance against a multi-million dollar corporation with more lawyers than there are Ace Attorney fan characters in the world.

EDIT - So I had a look at some of the comments posted on their website.  They're pretty upsetting, and I can definitely see why that might ruin someone's day.  But are they sue-worthy?  Absolutely not.  They're disgusting and go way too far, but not something that you can actually sue over.  Otherwise, I'd be making a killing from the SSMB staff mailbox.

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Where they actually stand legally if they were in the UK.

If they are in the UK, and the people posting such things are in the UK. Yes Digital Homicide can actually bring legal action against those users who post various threats and messages. However, they would first have to get the personal details of them, now they could get those if they went down the right legal channels from Valve, but I very much doubt they have both the finance to do that, or the mindset to actually do it.

Outside the UK, I'm not sure at all as to if there is anything like the UK's malicious communications law.

 

Where they stand in suing Valve. lol Nope. Can't do a bloody thing.

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Digital Homicide is based in Arizona, and I don't think there are any US laws that can be easily enforced when it comes to cyberbullying (if anyone knows better, feel free to correct me), which is one reason why it's so easy to get away with.  Harassing phone calls, maybe.  But people insulting you in a Steam group, not so much.

The problem is, I doubt all 100 people that are being subpoenaed (considering their track record with Jim Sterling) are guilty of the kind of harassment they're trying to seek justice for.  There are only about three screenshots posted on their site which detail what can properly be defined as harassment.  The rest, we are left to assume, is just negative feedback on their games.

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Of course they would complain about revenue being taken away.

I can't sympathize with them at all; if they'd just taken criticism and made decent games, none of this would have happened.

They're going though so much shit, but I'm not sorry because their misery is enturely their doing. They're children, plain and simple.

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Well, here's the Jimquisition that definitely absolutely does not mention this.

Nope.

None at all

Spoiler

he does

 

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He basically just loosely alludes to them as a contrast to Wildcard, who he feels people need to cut a little slack for since they're not nearly as underhanded and vitrolic as some other developer that is not-so-good.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Quote

We may have been painted in a negative customer light by gaming media, truthfully we’ve been fighting for lower prices and a more open market – which to me is the most important thing for consumers.

Are you kidding me? Fighting for lower prices? Fuck off. They sold their piece of shit The Slaughtering Grounds for like £10 at launch, it was only after it got found out the game was low budget trash that all Digital Homicide games was lowered. And an open market? Right, by suing anyone that dares throw criticism your way, and filling the market with low budget shit? Fuck right off.

I hope this means the end for this company. I really do.

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  • 3 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...

NOT YET SNAKE! IT'S NOT OVER YET! [cit.]

 

 

Do these guys (DH of course) have no shame at all?

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For those not in the loop,  here's a comprehensive and hilarious overview of Digital Homicide's career up to around the present.  

 

@Ryannumber1gamer This might also be good to stick into the intro post. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

An official statement from Jim himself.

Quote

After a year of lingering and a cavalcade of increasingly exasperating amendments, it is a distinct personal pleasure to finally be able to say that the lawsuit “James Romine v. James Stanton” has been dismissed with prejudice following discussions between my lawyer Bradley Hartman and the plaintiff James Romine.

 

In 2016, Romine sued yours truly – better (and preferably) known as Jim Sterling – for over $10million, a sum that would rise to over $15million during the course of the year. The original charges were assault, libel, and slander. Romine alleged that my coverage of his game studio Digital Homicide inflicted not only severe emotional damage but irreparably harmed his company.

Included in his complaint was an attempt to charge me for the time and money he’d spent learning just enough law to file the suit in the first place.

I will not go over the entirety of the lawsuit or its associated ordeal in this statement. There are a lot of things to talk about but right now I want to take a moment to simply respond to the immediate news.

First of all, I’m obviously pleased with the result. We filed for dismissal, because this whole thing was an instant waste of time and money that could never be recuperated. Even if this went to court and we counterclaimed, what would we get out of it? A dismissal with prejudice is even better than the simple dismissal I’d originally aimed for – this effectively means these ludicrous charges aren’t coming back.

Although he filed pro se and couldn’t seem to find legal help (his funding page for a lawyer remained starkly arid for the duration of this situation), Romine was nevertheless a drain on resources both material and emotional and his increasingly erratic filings continued to confuse and exasperate throughout the months.

For those curious about this resolution, I was not a direct part of the communication between Romine and my lawyer, but as I understand it, the agreement to drop the suit with prejudice was the result of Hartman’s enviable reasoning ability. The plaintiff agreed to drop his case after my lawyer explained exactly what would happen if this went to court and how we would respond.

That it got as far as it did, went on for as long as it did, is atrocious – especially when this is a case that amounts to a game developer wanting to silence a game critic.

I personally viewed, and still view, the lawsuit as an attempted attack on my freedom to do my legally protected job. I personally perceive it as an attack launched by a man who is unable to deal with criticism in a reasonable fashion and has sought to blame me, continuously, for his failures.

Even Digital Homicide’s removal from Steam following an attempt to sue 100 anonymous community members was falsely linked to me, Romine’s final amendment adding claims of conspiracy between myself and Valve Corporation.

Romine and his brother Robert have consistently laid the blame for their many failures at my feet, and at some point they are going to have to accept that if they’d stop continuing and escalating the animosity between themselves and the rest of the world, they’d stand a chance of improving themselves and their lot in life. A little reflection would do them both good, and I sincerely hope they emotionally steel themselves enough to partake of it one day.

There is no conspiracy. There is no orchestrated terror campaign. There is simply what there has always been – one random critic in  a sea of them having a stupid fight with a pair of brothers who don’t make a lot of sense and whose claims have a strained relationship with reality.

Many will have come here expecting humor or laughter, but I want to make it quite clear that I do not find this lawsuit funny in the slightest. Even getting the result I wanted is bittersweet, as it’s the result to a situation that should never have occurred – a distasteful situation that fills me with surrogate embarrassment for the man who filed it.

I find this lawsuit disgusting. It was and it is and it shall forever be disgusting.

While the accusations found within the lawsuit are farcical and definitively veer into comedy territory – as we’ll find out when I go through it in detail at a later date – the existence of it is simply grotesque. That you can be made to spend that much money and effort defending yourself from spurious claims should be a worrying prospect for anybody whose job involves saying things that some people aren’t going to like.

During the course of this whole ordeal, the subject of harassment has come up, with Romine alleging serious criminal acts committed against him. On a very serious note indeed, I would like to remind everybody that harassment is not a valid response to any argument, and that anything of the sort done in my name is something I quite vehemently oppose. We are better than that.

I’d like to thank everybody for their kind words and support over a trying year. I’d like to thank my wife and close friends who kept me spirited and laughing. I’d also like to thank my Patreon patrons, without whom I’d have a much harder time defending myself from this sort of awfulness.

There is more to be said, perhaps in a lighter tone, but right now I am tired and reflective, and should probably just play some videogames for a minute.

Thank you all once again for your continued support. I dread to think how facing this alone would have been.

Yours sexily,
James Fucking Stanton Son.

P.S. I did not enjoy playing The Slaughtering Grounds very much.

Game over, James and Robert Romine. Quoth The Slaughtering Grounds, "you lose."

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You can tell Jim's been bottling this up for a long time, because I can't recall any other Jimquisition to memory that's ever gone on for nearly forty minutes.

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