If game critic and video-maker Jim Sterling has a nemesis, it’s game developer Digital Homicide. That name might not sound familiar, as they’re a small studio that has released a couple of games on Steam. But they may soon enter notoriety after this month’s unprecedented actions.
On March 16, Digital Homicide formally filed a lawsuit in Arizona District Court, accusing Sterling of “assault, libel, and slander” to the tune of $10 million. (The only reason “assault” is listed is because libel is, legally speaking, part of a broader category when filing a lawsuit. Ignore that.) The lawsuit was filed by Digital Homicide co-founder James Romine.
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.
Digital Homicide is representing themselves in the lawsuit, and do not have an attorney.
Co-founder Robert Romine told me the lawsuit’s been in the works for roughly four months, and that Sterling crossed a line with “continued coverage and harassment of every single title we have ever posted.” (Just yesterday, Sterling posted a six-minute video tearing apart their new games.) Romine also said he recently received a package full of feces in the mail, despite “multiple requests private and public to the individual [Sterling] to inform his subscriber base to stop harassing me.”
Romine said he’s been in discussions with “a premium online defamation law firm as they agree we have a case and are seeking funds to acquire their services.” Thus, the crowdfunding.
Besides a humorous tweet that may or may not reference the lawsuit, Sterling hasn’t said much.
“It would be unwise to say much at this time,” he told me. “All I can tell you is that I am dealing with this situation and that I am fully confident about it.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve written about Sterling butting heads with a developer, but it’s the first time he’s been hit with a lawsuit over it.
The tumultuous relationship between Sterling and Digital Homicide is not new. A number of Sterling’s YouTube videos involve him playing through random games found on Steam, and many of them aren’t very good. This is part of Sterling’s bread-and-butter: making fun of bad games.
(It’s is not all he does, obviously. Sterling’s weekly Jimquisition video rants cover a number of other industry topics.)
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.
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Read the rest of the article here (it's pretty long): http://kotaku.com/angered-game-developer-sues-game-critic-jim-sterling-fo-1765484317
For some more background, this is one of the Jim Sterling's videos on The Slaughtering Grounds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6s0Wpn1zmU
bet: lost
