Digital Homicide has all games delisted on Steam

So apparently Digital Homicide has been completely delisted for, "suing 100 anonymous Steam users for $18 million."

I guess they needed to raise some money for their continuing law suit against Jim Sterling for his bad review?

I'll just add this image shared on Gaff so you can see a list of the affected games.

Dungeons of Kragmor was such a step in the right direction, too

@wheresderrick: Whatever ground they may have gained towards being ok with Dungeons of Kragmor was surely given up with Wyatt Derp and the dozen other games that were slight reskins of it (many released on the same day or within a few days of each other).

The Steam marketplace is a better place without them. I'm glad they finally did something extreme enough to force Valve to take action.

*Just my opinion. Please don't sue me.

I guess it takes the mass suing of steam user for valve to finally do something about some of the low effort games on steam.

also, $15 million. They are suing a critic for $15 million for being critical of their work.

Reminder that they're representing themselves in court because they cannot afford a lawyer. They set up a GoFundMe for one that made a whopping 425 dollars in ~6 months.

Good, screw those guys. Steam's store is now a tiny bit less horrible.

UPDATE: Digital Homicide has responded with a post on their garbage website. In it they argue that Valve is in the wrong here, and that this lawsuit against Steam users was just an attempt to address failures in Valve's moderation policies. They're also now seeking legal representation to start a case against Valve for "a long list of breach of contracts, interference with business, and anti-trust issues".

You can see the whole post copy/pasted in this NeoGAF thread or if you really want to you can get it from the original source at http://www.digitalhomicide.ninja/.

Yeah, I'm just watching this until they get disbarred from the Arizona Bar Association. This is a new kind of entitled.

this is, like, performance art or something right??

@chaser324: Anyone else get a feeling that these guys should be sectioned?

@shivermetimbers: I doubt that they'll actually find a lawyer willing to represent them, especially if they can't afford to pay and the work needs to be done on contingency.

@yesiamaduck: You could probably make a good argument for it - they're clearly a danger to themselves at this point.

I will say this: never post death threats or any kind of harassment to anyone for any reason. I don't care how much you don't like them or how bad they may appear. I don't care much for these people, but I care much much less for those who wish them harm.

But yeah, suing a critic for calling your game a failure is still entitlement to a new level. Just don't wish them harm.

Scum, pure and simple. Hopefully the result is fines, counter-suits and the complete collapse of the company. Hopefully no one besides the morons of said company have to spend an ounce of money or effort because these guys are just dickish enough to try and use the legal system to get back at them.

@shivermetimbers: There are definitely valid points to be made about Steam's moderation and customer support in general, but that's going to get totally lost due to how ludicrous most of this is.

I'm not the best web developer in the world, but even I can make a better looking site. The layout is bad, the graphic design is bad, the font sizes are bad, dat double sidebar... And it's not even responsive!

I'm really conflicted about this: while Valve really needs to do something about their marketplace, both in moderating user reviews and comments, and the flood of low quality games that is clogging up every store page, Digital Homicide has proved themselves to be absolutely terrible people.

A garbage site for garbage people.

Not referring to garbage men or collectors because those people aren't garbage at all.

I hope this man does not actually have a family. Maybe he thinks that the infamy will earn him money. This is going to get laughed out of court the moment the judge has to read the Steam usernames of the people he's trying to sue.

That being said, let's not pretend that Sterling doesn't get his jollies by fanning the flames. Don't act surprised or apologetic when you make a video roasting a developer and then your fanbase begins harassing said dev.

They're actually planning to represent themselves, which is always a great idea.

@atomicoldman: Sorry, I should've been more specific about what I was referring to. Yes, they're representing themselves in the suits against Steam users and Jim Sterling, but they are seeking legal counsel for the case they want to bring against Valve.

This isn't real, right? They're going to get crushed and if Valve actually takes it serious, their lawyers are going to have a field day taking everything these people own.

That's one way to make your unremarkable company more remarkable.

These guys continue to sound like real pieces of work.

Remember when it was really hard to get a game on Steam ... Those days are surely gone.

No idea what the "history" of this problem is. Even if their claims are legitimate about Valve not doing anything about death threats and harassment, suing individuals for an extreme amount of money hardly makes anyone sympathize with you. Whether it's true or exaggerated. If someone made a threat against you, or your family, then you should try to press charges. When people make serious threats they should be treated as such.

Otherwise someone saying they "feel bad for your kids for having terrible parents like you" might suck, and Valve should do something, but it's not worth thousands of dollars worth of damages. Just deal with those comments and make people aware of the problem so that it puts pressure on Valve to have more accountability.

I'm probably over simplifying the problem/solution but this doesn't seem like the right way to handle this at all.

This definitely seems like an unequivocally good thing to me.

It's like Amazon. Are there some dodgy deals and outright scams on there? Sure. But also, if I want basically anything and don't think too hard about the labour rights involved, I can have it delivered in under 24 hours and it all goes through the same system. If it exists, you can probably buy it on Amazon. That system, not what gets to be on the store or who gets to offer their marketplace offerings, is what is the guarantee. Worst case, I'll need to email customer support and give them a day or two to sort out a mistake or scammer operating in the system.

But everything just works and as long as I can find it, I can buy it with the knowledge that the store cares about making my experience a good one. The only issues are Amazon continuing to prioritise customer service and making sure their search and recommendation systems actually work so it can tell me stuff I don't know I want and find the things I do know I want.

And nothing of value was lost.

I like that they didn't bother to take out all the "Check us out on greenlight!!" stuff at the bottom of their page

Wow, that is a magnificent website

Not up to date with this, what was the developers's original beef with Jim Sterling? Would anyone mind maybe posting a link or a video? Thanks!

@imsh_pl: There's a lot of history so it's probably better if you just head to the Jim Sterling YouTube channel and look up his video on The Slaughtering Grounds where this whole thing started.

I don't want to link to all his videos mostly because his content is fairly polarizing. I have been following him off and on since his Escapist days and am not a Patron of his Patreon but he can sometimes have interesting things to say about video game culture.

I also enjoy his Fuck Konami News segments.

@imsh_pl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT0GSPxf0vw&list=PLxWy16HPPmeEDKGGyYYxel199E4i4adJu

Patrick also wrote a detailed piece on their feud back when the lawsuit was filed. Covers just about everything about this mess.

Internet death threats are not remotely a video games things, it's an anonymity on the internet thing. It may seem like a gamer thing because we pay more attention to this community than others, but people sending death threats on the internet is not a problem unique to games or even more prevalent in games.

@mambogator: @ll_exile_ll: Let's please focus on the Digital Homicide related news. Let's not retread those old discussions.