Digital Homicide Drops Its Lawsuit Against Steam Users, Says It's Shutting Down Completely
from the what-you-sow dept
While we'll try to keep the grave-dancing at a minimum, it wasn't difficult to see this coming. Game publisher Digital Homicide has something of a history of lashing out against any negative reviews it might receive, of which there are many. Whether it is more high profile targets like well-followed YouTube game reviewers, or merely lowly Steam customers that offered reviews of Digital Homicide games, the company has taken to simply suing everyone for all the things as its reaction. It seemed easy to recognize that this was not a winning business strategy in general, but when Steam reacted to the latest attempts at litigation by simply dropping all Digital Homicide games from its store, things clearly became dire for the company.
And now the story comes to a close with a conclusion pretty much everyone saw coming: Digital Homicide has filed a motion to dismiss its lawsuit against those Steam customers, declaring the company to be financially ruined and unable to move forward with the litigation.
Speaking with TechRaptor, Digital Homicide’s James Romine explained that Valve’s decision to remove all of the studio’s games from Steam is what did them in:
“The case dismissal was only due to financial reasons caused by the removal of our games. I believe the case was very solid. There were in excess of 140 false statements by the 11 Steam users, tens of thousands of posts harassing myself and my customers, three direct interference with written contracts with third parties by Steam users (some of which were competitors), and much more. A combined in excess of 25 reports were filed against the worst users of the 11 with no resolutions being found.”
Well, you know, maybe if you hadn't attacked Steam customers on the basis of leaving bad reviews for your games, this wouldn't have happened. It's important to recognize, as I mentioned in an earlier post, that even though Romine talks a great deal about the vile vitriol some folks have harried his company with, the lawsuits come down to bad reviews. Suing those that leave negative reviews of your product isn't so much a business strategy as it is an attempt at business suicide, a lesson that appears to have been taught to completion to Digital Homicide.
The filing itself claims not only that Romine's business is "destroyed", but that he had sought out a local sheriff initially for help building a criminal case against the Steam users. Also, Digital Homicide would like a refund on its court filing fee.
One can only hope that other businesses will learn from this and not react to negative reviews by torpedoing their businesses through similar litigation.
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Filed Under: critics, lawsuits, reviews, steam
Companies: digital homicide
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Funny that seems how many of their customers felt...
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Doubtful. They'll probably consider this as a betrayal. They'll never learn from this.
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Response to: vgiannell5 on Oct 7th, 2016 @ 12:43am
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Oct 7th, 2016 @ 1:25am
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Cue the tiny violin solo for the crocodile tears
Maybe if they weren't so freakin' lawsuit happy then people would have been able to cut them some slack, but suing your customers over Steam reviews? What did they expect would happen from something like that?
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Re: Cue the tiny violin solo for the crocodile tears
Probably the same thing Metallica thought would happen from suing their fans during the Napster era. Which was... uhhh... yeah, I got nuthin'.
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The lesson has been taught, but the student (Romine) remains ignorant. He'll just go somewhere else and do it all again. Maybe next time it'll be presented a bit differently or dressed up in a different guise, but he won't change the playbook.
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Solid?
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Re: Solid?
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Re: Re: Solid?
Usually done by lawyers who take "sure win" cases, like truck wrecks.
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Re: Re: Solid?
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Mass litigation is a sign of a failing company
Yes, even Hollywood. Just on a bigger, slower scale.
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Re: Mass litigation is a sign of a failing company
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by
Digital Homicide
This hardcover is only available for a limited time. Call the number on your screen now!
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Nope... it's time to ratchet it all up about 1 notch or 20!
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Who ran the numbers?
What, did you really think people were going to keep giving you money and buy your games so you could sue them?
Seems like fiscal planning wasn't a strong suit of the company, given that the loss of income was a foreseeable result to anyone whose been on the internet for more than two minutes.
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https://www.gofundme.com/47uexn9c
$450 of $75k goal
Raised by 12 people in 6 months
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HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!
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Oh, and if someone had the foresight to think through the blindingly obvious: if you drag your distributor into a lawsuit, you can expect your distributor to drop you faster than a hot potato.
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