Digital Homicide's $10 Million Lawsuit Against Game Critic Gone

from the bang-bang dept

Update: We've made some corrections to this piece to clarify that, while this is a victory for Jim Sterling, it's a result of Digital Homicide agreeing to a settlement, rather than the court tossing the lawsuit, as the original suggested.

The saga of game developer Digital Homicide whipped through our pages like an idiotic windstorm. This gust of blustery nonsense started with the company's lawsuit against a game critic, Jim Sterling, then moved on to it suing Steam users over reviews they wrote, before twirling into the stage where Valve banned Digital Homicide games from Steam entirely and the company stated it planned to shut down operations. All of that happened in the span of six months, which would be impressive if it weren't so sad.

Still, the resolution of the threats against Steam users wasn't the end of the story. The lawsuit against Sterling was still out there, a $10 million dollar anvil hanging over the game critic's head. Until this week, that is, when the court in which the suit had been filed dismissed it with prejudice as part of a settlement agreement between the two parties.

Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(ii), the parties hereby stipulate and agree to the dismissal of all claims in this action, including the claims raised in the Amended Complaint of February 3, 2017, with prejudice with each party to bear its own costs and attorneys’ fees.

Plaintiff agrees to forever refrain from directly or indirectly filing against Defendant any cause of action arising from the same facts or circumstances alleged in the Amended Complaint. Plaintiff also agrees to refrain from taking action against Defendant’s business, such as sending DMCA takedown notices, without first considering whether Defendant is engaged in fair use of a copyright under 17 U.S.C. § 107, as required under federal law and Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., 801 F.3d 1126 (9th Cir. 2015).

And that will be the end of that. But Sterling wasn't the only one casting a wary glance at this lawsuit. Many in the game-critiquing world watched on, wondering whether or not a court was going to allow a critic to be punished for doing his job. Were it to have happened, that would have sent a chilling effect through the gaming industry. Fortunately, it didn't.

Which isn't to say that this all ends without any blood being drawn.

What’s particularly disturbing about lawsuits like this is that, even in cases where they are clearly frivolous, as this was, they can force critics to spend significant amounts of money on legal defenses. Sterling had to hire a lawyer, Bradley Hartman, who helped convince the court to dismiss this case, which, in Sterling’s words, involved “series of allegations that were difficult to comprehend even for the one accused of them.”

“Not all threats from the Internet are idle ones, and I wouldn’t recommend anybody brush them off,” Sterling concluded.

Which is again why this country is desperately crying out for strong Anti-SLAPP laws at the federal level. Having to fend off these vacuous lawsuits with no recourse at the end is a burden without justification.

Filed Under: criticism, defamation, free speech, jim sterling, reviews, steam
Companies: digital homicide

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.

Filed Under: critics, lawsuits, reviews, steam
Companies: digital homicide

Digital Homicide Sues Steam Reviewers, Steam Drops It Like It's Hot

from the good-guys dept

In recent days, megalith digital games platform Steam found itself making headlines with a tweak to its game reviews system. At issue was Steam's prioritizing reviews from customers who bought a game on Steam over anyone else. Asked for an explanation for the move, Valve suggested that some game developers were attempting to game the reviews system by exchanging download codes for positive reviews. While this explanation omitted the prevalence of crowdsource funding of games, such as Kickstarter funding, Valve at least was putting on a public face of trying to treat its gaming customers well.

And now we have the second such story of Valve looking out for its gaming customers, as the platform has chosen to entirely drop a game developer known for its anti-consumer behavior off of the Steam store. You may recall that Digital Homicide is a game developer that has been featured on these pages before, having decided that the best way to deal with some mildly scathing reviews of its games was to sue the reviewer for ten million dollars, alleging emotional, reputational and financial distress. It seems that lawsuit wasn't a one-off, as Digital Homicide has now apparently filed suit against a whole bank of Steam users (at least 100), who reviewed Digital Homicide games, to the tune of $18 million, with a court recently granting a subpoena requesting that Steam turn over identification data for those users.

And, as a result, Valve has dropped Digital Homicide completely from the Steam platform.

By Friday evening twitter user "lashman" discovered Valve had removed all of Digital Homicide's games from Steam. Games like Wyatt Derp, Temper Tantrum, and The Slaughtering Grounds (the first game Sterling reviewed)—are all gone along with their community pages, reviews, and associated downloads as if they'd never been there. You needn't worry if you've already bought the games in the past. They're still there, accessible through your account's library. But if you have a pressing desire to play Wyatt Derp in the coming days, you'll have to look somewhere else besides Steam.

"Valve has stopped doing business with Digital Homicide for being hostile to Steam customers," Valve VP of marketing Doug Lombardi told Motherboard in a brief email. He didn't say how Valve plans to handle the subpoena or if "being hostile" even directly refers to the lawsuits.

Valve went as far as to allow community groups and past purchases to remain up on Steam, but everything else is gone. No more games for sale. No more reviews of any kind. No promo videos or early access projects. It's gone.

Digital Homicide, as is its wont, is attempting to wrap itself in the blanket of victimhood, throwing all kinds of accusations at its targets and doing everything it can to pretend that this legal action doesn't revolve around negative reviews of its products.

On Saturday night, Digital Homicide responded with a lengthy post on the studio's homepage, suggesting it targeted Steam reviewers who harassed them.

"The lawsuit recently filed is solely in regards to individuals where no resolution was able to be obtained from Steam to provide a safe environment for us to conduct business," Digital Homicide said. "We submitted numerous reports and sent multiple emails in regards to individuals making personal attacks, harassment, and more on not only us but on other Steam customers who were actually interested in our products."

The post then goes on to show screenshots of posts on the Steam community boards illustrating these personal attacks. Two of the biggest examples, in which one user says he wants "to murder every single person responsible for this [game]" and another that tells Digital Homicide chief James Romine he should "kill himself for making me waste 0.14 for your ****** game," don't appear in the leaked documents from a few days ago.

They don't appear there because these lawsuits have nothing to do with the kind of over-the-top vitriol that any game developer ought to have fashioned a thick enough skin to wave off in this digital era. This is all about the reviews and nothing but. Were the court to suddenly find itself burdened with lawsuits against every game review that included nasty language, the system would collapse on itself. Everyone knows this, everyone deals with this. It may not be pleasant, but it isn't a reason for a lawsuit.

Yet Digital Homicide's suit claims harassment, alongside -- swear to god -- disorderly conduct, stalking, criminal impersonation, tortious interference, libel, unjust enrichment, restitution, negligence, damages, and conspiracy to commit civil rights violations. In its response to being dropped from Steam, the developer goes on to claim that Valve's siding with its customers is an indication that Steam is not a "safe environment", before suggesting that some form of legislation is needed.

It better come quick, along with a win against every John Doe it is suing in court, because the prospects for Digital Homicide making any money from selling its games to a public now informed of these actions are bleak indeed. Valve meanwhile, and its Steam platform along side it, have built up just a little more goodwill with that same public in siding with customers over an abusive game developer.

Filed Under: games, reviews, steam
Companies: digital homicide, valve

Game Studio's Plan To Deal With Critic Of Games: Sue Him To Hell

from the waaaaaah dept

There are lots of dumb ways for companies to combat online critics. You can simply claim copyright over the criticism as a way to try to silence it, although that tends to end poorly for the silencer thanks to public backlash. You can go to the court to ask for an injunction against the critic as a way to try to silence it, although that tends to end poorly for the silencer thanks to the Streisand Effect. Or you can ask the courts to test whether the criticism amounts to defamation, although, again, The Streisand Effect, the public backlash, and the fact that those types of suits are rarely successful.

This story is an extended example of the last of those, with game developer Digital Homicide deciding to file suit against game critic Jim Sterling to the tune of ten million dollars, all because Sterling's shtick is to post online reviews mocking what he considers to be crappy video games.

Digital Homicide claims Sterling, whose real name is James Stanton, has "falsely accused [Digital Homicide] and caused damage" to the company. According to court documents, the company is asking for $2.26 million in direct product damage; $4.3 million in emotional, reputational, and financial distress; and $5 million in punitive damage requests. That adds up to $10.76 million, and it's nothing to scoff at.

The claims are, frankly, ludicrous, but they're the kind you occasionally see leveled against an online critic. As most of you will know, the claims being made will typically need to be shown to have been willfully fallacious to get past what will surely be Sterling's defense, that his criticism is either his opinion or that it is valid, or both. The monetary damages asked for are equally silly. The only real potential meat to this whole thing is the accusation that Sterling falsely accused Digital Homicide of committing offenses or crimes.

In an article titled "Digital Homicide And The Case Of The Sockpuppet Developers," Sterling remarked that another Digital Homicide game, Galactic Hitman, had artwork taken from elsewhere. Specifically, it may have been lifted from an artist on DeviantArt. Sterling later edited the piece to say it "may" have been purchased from Shutterstock, an online repository of media. In the lawsuit, Digital Homicide presented a July 2015 receipt for a Shutterstock subscription.

As Sterling dug into other companies Digital Homicide was connected to, he discovered that the people behind the studio had also started a company called ECC Games, which seemed to take its name from a different game publisher in Poland. Digital Homicide points to a line in Sterling's article where he argued it could lead to "potential legal trouble for folks who rebranded and accidentally defamed a completely different studio." In the piece, Sterling spoke with the Polish publisher, who said it had "already taken legal actions."

In other words, you have a commentator or critic raising the issue of potential legal issues, while not directly claiming them to exist as a matter of certainty. That couching language is likely going to mean that the false accusation portion of the suit will fail, as there's very little difference between how Sterling discusses this and how any media outlet deals with the existence of potential criminal or civil actions.

And that's really all a side show, because the fact is that Digital Homicide appears to be chiefly angry about the criticism of its games as leveled by Sterling.

The drama began when Sterling published a 10-minute video of Digital Homicide's first-person shooter Slaughtering Grounds in November 2014, dubbing it the "new" worst game of 2014 "contender" and a game where "the awfulness just doesn't stop." The game did not get much attention outside of Sterling's videos; in fact, one of Sterling's critical videos is the second Google result for Slaughtering Grounds and the first result when you do a search on YouTube. In response to this criticism, Digital Homicide published two videos — both removed, though archived on Sterling's channel — where the developers call Sterling "a fucking idiot" and accuse him of not playing the game correctly.

In another — again, now deleted — post, Digital Homicide explained its position.

"In the sole instance of Jim Sterling's 'Squirty Play' video," said the developer, "We find the usage of the terms 'WORST GAME OF 2014 CONTENDER!' and 'Absolute Failure' to describe the entirety of our product while not actually evaluating it in its entirety unfair and unreasonable use of our copyright material. While the reader may disagree with our claim, we believe the unbiased perspective of a court will agree there has been a violation of our copyright and for this reason we will be pursuing an attorney and proceeding with our complaint."

That last bit had originally come along with a DMCA takedown of Sterling's review, but Sterling appealed the takedown to YouTube, which put the video back up, because the claim that this kind of criticism is copyright infringement is insane.

So, how's everyone in the public reacting to the DMCA takedowns and the lawsuit? Well, Digital Homicide had put up a crowdsourcing site to fund its legal efforts against Sterling, but had to take it down because of the sheer number of people trolling the page. The press, meanwhile, is reporting on this issue, and not in a manner favorable to Digital Homicide. In true Streisand Effect form, Sterling's reviews are spreading as a result, and Digital Homicide comes off looking petty.

In other words, they had better win that ten million dollars, because it doesn't sound like the public is going to be happily buying their games at the same volume as they did before all this nonsense began.

Filed Under: assault, criticism, defamation, jim sterling, reviews, the streisand effect
Companies: digital homicide