Jim Sterling being sued by Digital Homicide

[Doli]

 

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Angered Game Developer Sues Critic Jim Sterling For $10 Million

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.

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Digital Homicide is representing themselves in the lawsuit, and do not have an attorney. They’re currently crowdfunding support for additional help, saying all donations will be kept anonymous.

Full story with more info on Kotaku (too much to post here)

 

Digital Homicide's Lawsuit information:

 

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After reading the onslaught of feedback I wanted to write a quick explanation here of the context of the current lawsuit.  I have seen countless posts stating this lawsuit is in relation to opinion and criticism when in fact it has nothing to do with it.  This is not about someone not liking our games this is about someone printing defamatory and false information to you the public and convincing you something is true when it is not and causing massive damage to us in the wake.  This is not about you as a normal individual hopping onto the internet and posting an opinion that may upset someone.  This is about holding media figures and news outlets to a sense of duty to print factual information not just something to collect views and hits from.  

 

Think of it like this, when you log on to the internet and say whatever comes to mind about someone else it's like walking down the street and you may accidently or purposely walk into someone.  Most of the time it's just shrugged off with a hey watch where you are going.  Now when you are a media figure printing articles with information you say is fact with 300,000 followers you are no longer just a person walking down the street you are a semi and can cause extreme damage to those you run into.  Defamation has become even more relevant with the boom of the internet not just in the context of amount of articles but the way in which those articles are distributed.  When a newspaper printed an article that held defamatory material it was distributed and that was it since that days paper had a limited quantity to distribute.  Articles and videos of todays news are in fact a neverending printing press exposing the same defamatory statements over and over to new individuals every single day.

 

 If you stop and think about what I have said here you will realize this is to protect you as well, you could be the next person an irresponsible semi driver plows into on the internet highway.

Link

 

Digital Homicide's gofundme link

 

 

[FiB3R]

 

The sound of Jim reversing over Digital Homicides corpse.

[link6155]

If they made better games there wouldn't be a problem. Rather than address the issue at hand directly, they decide to go after an individual who called them out on their faults. Content creators should expect critism, if you can't handle that then maybe you shouldn't be making contents for others then.

 

[+virtorio MVC]

If they've sold anything at all, it's almost certainty due to Sterling's coverage. It's also a misrepresentation of Digital Homicide to call them game developers.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

I doubt this will go anywhere, seeing as DH can't even pay for their lawyer in the first place.

[trag3dy]

I see this going well for Digital Homicide. Extremely well.

 

Yeah no sarcasm there at all.

[Torolol]

i wonder if Konami would "donate" for Digital Homicide's 'cause'?

[MightyJordan]

When the story came out, I saw people who claim to be pro-ethics actually defending Digital Homicide, just because they don't like Jim Sterling.   

 

I did dissect most of DH's statement for a friend last week, so I'll repeat it here...

 

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I have been falsely accused of:
 
Stealing artwork (you did)
Stealing assets (you did)
Flipping projects with no work put in (yep, you've done that several times)
Doxing (did that, too, as badly as one of your games)
Had products misrepresented with intention to do damage (yep, false trailers)
Of illegally using another companies name (yep, used another developer's name to shill a ###### game)
Conducting illegal business activities (don't know about this one, but they did bribe people with Steam keys for his games in exchange for Greenlight votes)
Impersonating someone ("I'M JIM ######## STERLING, SON")
Being incompetent and unable to perform my job (unless your job is amateur con artist, this is definitely true)"

"Developers" like Digital Homicide are the reason why Steam Greenlight + Early Access can be summed up with this...

 

 

A lot of the diamonds get buried in an avalanche of ###### games, and it's that avalanche which makes me wary of any game that's in Early Access.

[compl3x]

As long as JS can corroborate any allegation he's made then they have no case. It is only libellous or slanderous if the things said or printed are untrue. Frankly, regardless of whether you like or dislike Sterling you'd have to admit that he doesn't seem like the kind of guy to make wild allegations without having the proof.

 

On 3/22/2016 at 8:59 PM, MightyJordan said:

When the story came out, I saw people who claim to be pro-ethics actually defending Digital Homicide, just because they don't like Jim Sterling.   

 

Gee, it's almost like they have ulterior motives and couldn't really give a ***** about ethics, huh? 

 

I am not even sure why people don't like Sterling. You can dislike his style or whatever*  but I think he is on point most of the time and prosecutes his opinion really well. Compare that with the venom and bile most discussions about gaming descend into.

 

 

 

*that "thank God for me" bit is kind of lame & some of the weird ###### he splices into his videos are stupid

[Nick H. Supervisor]

Wow, this is still going? Weirdly I watched his video (posted a year ago) about this issue, I thought it had been resolved. I guess not.

[FloatingFatMan]

2 hours ago, compl3x said:

As long as JS can corroborate any allegation he's made then they have no case. It is only libellous or slanderous if the things said or printed are untrue. 

Gotta agree here, if Stirling can prove his claims, DH will lose and could end up being counter-sued.

 

Clearly, this is a cash grab.  Hell, I very much doubt Stirling could pay that amount even if he lost!

 

 

[MightyJordan]

5 hours ago, compl3x said:

As long as JS can corroborate any allegation he's made then they have no case. It is only libellous or slanderous if the things said or printed are untrue. Frankly, regardless of whether you like or dislike Sterling you'd have to admit that he doesn't seem like the kind of guy to make wild allegations without having the proof.

It'll almost certainly be an open-and-shut case if it goes to court; almost all of the "allegations" were corroborated just in the one Jimquisition video he did on them back in October (the "Conducting illegal business activities" one is open to interpretation).

 

 

And yeah, he is always quick to correct any cockups he makes (like accidentally attributing Bomberman: Act Zero to Namco, when it was actually Konami who published it; coincidentally, there's an edition of my favourite segment at the end of the above video).

Edited March 22, 2016 by MightyJordan

[Jim K Global Moderator]

hehe...James Romine is getting a lot of support.

[LaP]

14 hours ago, link6155 said:

If they made better games there wouldn't be a problem. Rather than address the issue at hand directly, they decide to go after an individual who called them out on their faults. Content creators should expect critism, if you can't handle that then maybe you shouldn't be making contents for others then.

 

I don't think they are game developers though. Making a simple game using game engine assets made by others ain't really hard.

 

Those guys are trolls looking at making easy money.

[MightyJordan]

4 minutes ago, jjkusaf said:

hehe...James Romine is getting a lot of support.

Just had a look - https://www.gofundme.com/47uexn9c - and the first donation alone was $100 (probably from himself).

[Zinomian]

WOW....I had only heard of the sterling guy and watched a few of his videos, however, i found his style just ....not my cup of tea.... However, after doing some research, and reading about the lawsuit, I cant help but hope that Jim wins and forces that horrible company out of business.  They really do make horrible games.

[Nogib]

JS is the biggest douche ever.  Based off of that alone I hope this company destroys him.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

5 minutes ago, Zinomian said:

WOW....I had only heard of the sterling guy and watched a few of his videos, however, i found his style just ....not my cup of tea.... However, after doing some research, and reading about the lawsuit, I cant help but hope that Jim wins and forces that horrible company out of business.  They really do make horrible games.

I don't like his comedy parts (generally the start and end of each video) but I respect and agree with the points that he makes in his videos. And in this situation, Digital Homicide don't have a leg to stand on.

[FloatingFatMan]

29 minutes ago, Nogib said:

JS is the biggest douche ever.  Based off of that alone I hope this company destroys him.

So, sod truth and all that, huh? Just destroy Stirling because you personally don't like him?

 

Nice...

 

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

33 minutes ago, Nogib said:

JS is the biggest douche ever.  Based off of that alone I hope this company destroys him.

His persona may be to people, but the actual guy behind it is cool enough

 

 

No to mention the arguments and points he makes are solid.

[trag3dy]

There are reasons to dislike Jim Sterling but they have nothing to do with this case and I hope he crushes this guy.

[compl3x]

Honest question; not trolling: what are some of the reasons people don't like Jim? Disagreeing with someone's opinion and saying you don't like them as a human are very different things.

[trag3dy]

16 hours ago, compl3x said:

Honest question; not trolling: what are some of the reasons people don't like Jim? Disagreeing with someone's opinion and saying you don't like them as a human are very different things.

For starters (nsfw):

 

https://youtu.be/-uGK2lqfEY8

 

Him (and his wife, who is even worse than him) are big into gender politics and feminism, they prefer to censor and chastise instead of taking the approach that if you don't like something just don't buy it or otherwise avoid it. He claims the things he says won't ever result in games being taken away from gamers yet here we have actual proof of just that thing happening, no matter how you feel about the content of the game.

 

And then there is his review of "tranny gladiator" which resulted in a developer pulling his admittedly bad (but that's beside the point) game from steam after receiving death threats from Sterling fans who saw his review.

 

He also condones doxing of people he disagrees with (gamer gaters) and had to backpedal when people called him out on it.

 

I'm sure there is much more to not like about him but these are just the first few that come to mind and this isn't really the thread to go into depth about it.

Edited March 23, 2016 by trag3dy

[HawkMan]

On 22/03/2016 at 5:03 PM, Nogib said:

JS is the biggest douche ever.  Based off of that alone I hope this company destroys him.

Sterling is an annoying asshat, the company is worse though. 

 

The good thing is that, the company is doing illegal stuff, Sterling, I can just not watch his annoying as crap videos, though I can't stop peopel from linking them everywhere to prove a point, instead of just writing what they want to say in 2-5 words. 

[HawkMan]

47 minutes ago, trag3dy said:

For starters (nsfw):

 

https://youtu.be/-uGK2lqfEY8

 

Him (and his wife, who is even worse than him) are big into gender politics and feminism, they prefer to censor and chastise instead of taking the approach that if you don't like something just don't buy it or otherwise avoid it. He claims the things he says won't ever result in games being taken away from gamers yet here we have actual proof of just that thing happening, no matter how you feel about the content of the game.

 

And then there is his review of "tranny gladiator" which resulted in a developer pulling his admittedly bad (but that's beside the point) game from steam after receiving death threats from Sterling fans who saw his review.

 

He also condones doxing of people he disagrees with (gamer gaters) and had to backpedal when people called him out on it.

 

I'm sure there is much more to not like about him but these are just the first few that come to mind and this isn't really the thread to go into depth about it.

meh, I didn't even know any of that and just didn't like him for the way he acts in general.