Tag: Digital Homicide

IPE Update: Digital Homicide Needs A Lawyer


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(Update: This detail was pointed out by a reader. The document has been stamped as “not in proper form” and “subject to rejection by the court.)

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Small IPE update this week. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but Digital Homicide is in severe need of a lawyer. Today’s update is just two pages consisting of two very short paragraphs, expanding upon the previous set of updates.

The document itself is a request for the court to accept the motion in response to Stanton’s motion to dismiss the case. Translated to English, the request says “please accept that last set of documents I submitted.” Romine has no idea if the document is required, but he filed it anyway and apologizes if it is a waste of the court’s time.

This is only submitted as the term “Opposition” was not specifically stated in those two documents. The Plaintiff was unaware if this was a required statement and felt it may need to be stated officially. Apologies if this is obvious and unnecessary.

The presence of a lawyer could have saved this lawsuit from several follies, such as the existence of this document or that “aforementioned” is one word and not two.

The Plaintiff files this Affidavit in Opposition with these two afore mentioned documents as Opposition and the undersigned requests the Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss be denied.

For those of you keeping score on the motion/response score count, we are now in Digital Homicide’s motion in response to the defendant’s motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s opposition in response to the defendant’s motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s case.

It makes sense in legal circles, not much elsewhere.

[Column] Valve’s Constantly Changing Position On DigiHom


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[Update: we have received notice from Digital Homicide that the issue below is due to an error in the Steam API, and not part of any deliberate decision by Valve. We apologize for the error.]

The game above is Daisy’s Sweet Time Cupcake Mania, one of numerous clone games up on Greenlight by esteemed developer Digital Homicide. This title, along with nearly a dozen others, were submitted on June 2nd to Greenlight only to be marked as incompatible on June 3rd.

Very quickly after, someone at Valve marked the game as compatible on June 6th. Evidently, the Valve employee who allowed the title is at odds with another, because the game was marked as incompatible again on the 9th, only to be marked compatible again the same day, to be marked and then unmarked again on the exact same day. The same thing happened on the 10th, the 15th, the 21st, the 27th, and again today on the 5th of July this cupcake game has been marked incompatible with Greenlight.

And, as always happens to be the case, the story gets stranger. This back and forth marking/demarking is present on virtually every single one of Digital Homicide’s current Greenlight games. In fact, in the time it has taken me to write this, someone at Valve has already re-marked the games as compatible.

Who are these two employees, locked in an endless struggle over the fate of Digital Homicide’s Greenlight titles? Are there people arguing over the Valve office coffee machine about the artistic merits of Not In My Crapper?

Just take a gander at the history of Daisy’s Sweet Time: Cupcake Mania and recognize that this is pretty standard for DigiHom’s games. I looked through a massive amount of other, random titles on Greenlight and the only other games with this history of back and forth have been removed.

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IPE Update: Judge Strikes Down Digital Homicide


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It’s been quite a while since the last In Plain English update on the Digital Homicide lawsuit, but earlier this week two new documents were presented to the court system that, as some of you have pointed out, I’ve ignored. I posted a short bit on Twitter essentially saying that nothing new was really presented, but for the sake of documentation, it’s best to just go over recent developments in a little more detail. For the sake of brevity, I’m going to assume you’re up to date on the case. If not, check out our previous coverage.

There are a few things at issue here. James Stanton has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds of jurisdiction, among other complaints, to which James Romine filed a response and a motion to amend as well as a motion to exceed the page limit. The court accepted the first motion to amend and motion to exceed the page limit.

However, Romine filed a motion to amend his response and Stanton objected on the grounds that the amendment didn’t do anything but repeat previous arguments. The court has upheld the defense, and denied the second motion to amend the response.

As a result, the court has approved a motion for leave to the plaintiff to amend his response to the defense’s motion to dismiss the case. In layman’s terms, Romine has more time to respond to Stanton’s attempt to have the case dismissed.

The second document is a 28 page rebuttal of Stanton’s defenses. It reiterates a lot of what Romine has said already, that Stanton does business in Arizona because people in the state can subscribe to his Patreon and buy items. He states that he can sue Stanton as an individual because the defense used his name specifically in coverage (calling him Romino).

Romine was also CISSP certified until 2014, and his sales have been destroyed by Stanton’s followers. I’m not sure what those two have to do with each other, but they’re noted in the same paragraph.

Our take: Once again, it’s interesting to see Digital Homicide, a company with seemingly little self-awareness of their public perception, using the Ventura v Kyle case in their list of precedent. If you’re not aware, Jesse Ventura sued former Navy Seal Chris Kyle over Kyle’s statement that he punched Ventura in the face at a bar after Ventura allegedly stated that the Seals could “lose a few” in reference to Kyle’s deceased fellow soldiers. When Kyle was murdered in 2013 at a shooting range in Texas, Ventura instead pursued damages against Kyle’s estate. He came out with $1.8 million, which he has since been accused of lying to the court and claiming said money would be paid by the book publisher’s insurance in order to ensure a verdict in his favor.

(Addendum: The verdict in Ventura’s favor has been thrown out and the case is set to go to retrial. This was accidentally deleted along with another comment.)

Romine is still representing himself as of this publishing and his Gofundme for a lawyer presently sits at $425.

[Community] The Beast That Wouldn’t Stop It


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It’s time for another Community Monday here at DH Fallout, the website that used to cover those online games, and as usual I have another Digital Homicide update for you. The last post on Digital Homicide got such a huge response that it shut down the website for part of the day. The positive side is that it spurred me to upgrade us to Cloudflare, so this shouldn’t be a problem going forward.

Despite having nearly two dozen of their games slammed with an “incompatible with Greenlight” sticker from Valve, rejection both by the gaming community at large and now their would-be host doesn’t seem to be slowing the developer down. No, on Sunday the 5th, Digital Homicide added another seven games to their Greenlight portfolio. Let’s break them down:

  • Barnacle Explorer Sub: Fish Rescue – Another Space Invaders clone, the exact same looking game from the dozen other clones DH uploaded last week.
  • Barnacle Explorer Sub: Shark Rescue – A clone of the game above, but with sharks instead of fish.
  • Barnacle Explorer Sub: Octo Helper – A clone of the game above, but with octopus instead of sharks.
  • Mike the Astronaut: Battle on Arturian Twelve – A clone of the game above, but in space.
  • Star Scream on Orion – Looks like a clone of DH’s other game, Decimation of Olarath.
  • Sharktastic Yum Yums – Probably as close as you’ll get to an original Digital Homicide title.

What caught my eye is the last game on the list, Clickerton Gang. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why this game in particular was screaming for my attention, at least not until a couple of people on Twitter pointed it out: We’ve seen Clickerton Gang before.

Clickerton Gang was first put up on Greenlight by user Bobmiddleton80, an indie developer who appeared out of the blue with three games ready for the Steam community to vote on. We first heard of Bob Middleton under allegations that the account was actually a sock puppet of Digital Homicide. One of Middleton’s games, as it turns out, was Clickerton Gang. In what can only be pure coincidence, the logo for Clickerton Gang bears a strong resemblance to Digital Homicide’s game Wyatt Derp. You might even say it looks like two alternatives to the same stock photo.

You have to imagine that Valve is getting tired of Digital Homicide’s shenanigans. The seven new games weren’t even up for a day and Valve has already struck down five of them as incompatible with Greenlight. This leaves DH with 50 games currently on Greenlight. 26 of its titles are listed as “incompatible with Greenlight.”

With the developer shoveling more trash into the pile every week and Valve increasingly stomping down on it, you have to wonder how long it takes until the developer is blacklisted from uploading new titles period, and whether or not that will be enough to prevent an entity that has had no problem changing its name in the past.

[Not Massive] Valve Just Struck Down Digital Homicide


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In the world of Steam and shady developers, no name has drawn quite as much hatred from the gaming public like Digital Homicide. Not unlike similar personalities including Uwe Boll, Digital Homicide’s notoriety is only superseded by the fact that the perception of its following is much higher than the real numbers. What it does have, however, is the ability to flip Unity engine assets and turn those into cookie cutter games that are quickly becoming parodies of themselves.

downloadFast forward to Steam Greenlight, a service that Digital Homicide has flooded with dozens of titles. As of this publishing, the company has more than forty titles in its Greenlight section. You read that correctly, more than forty. In their rush to clutter the service with as many titles as possible, Digital Homicide has resorted to putting out entire series of games that appear to be quite literally the exact same game but with different stock images.

To the left is Daisy’s Sweet Time: Cupcake Mania 3. It is identical to the other two iterations of the game plastered on Greenlight, and functionally it is also identical to Merle Wizard Extraordinaire #1, 2, and 3, all posted on the exact same day. Those games, in turn, are identical down to the placement of enemies, to Sarah to the Rescue, and its four sequels. Eleven games, all posted to Steam on the same day, all completely identical except for the art. As of this posting, there are more than a dozen Space Inavders clones up on Greenlight through Digital Homicide.

download (1)And the list goes on. Games that are reskins of other Digital Homicide games, sequels upon sequels that are the exact same title coming out at the same time as the original, functionally identical except for slight changes in art.

Because I am a veritable soothsayer of the gaming industry, I started this piece yesterday to convey the message that Valve should do its job and strike these games down. As so happens in the magical box that is the WordPress draft folder, my wish was granted and Valve has struck down many of Digital Homicide’s current Greenlight games.

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If you head over to their workshop, you’ll notice that a good two dozen of Digital Homicide’s games have been blackmarked by Valve as “incompatible with Greenlight.” Whether or not this fully disqualifies titles for release is up for debate, however Valve has clearly shown their disapproval for Digital Homicide’s release tactics.

Overall, 22 of Digital Homicide’s games have been slapped with an incompatible tag. Despite being labeled as incompatible, Wyatt Derp 2 is still available for purchase. Granted, the game was made available before Valve tagged the title, so the future of Digital Homicide’s presence on Steam is certainly in question.

MMO Fallout will update with more information as it becomes available.

IPE Update: Run Over By An Internet Semi Update


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Small In Plain English update for the James Romine V James Stanton case (Digital Homicide V Jim Sterling). Following the recent motion to dismiss the case, James Romine has filed his own motion to dismiss the dismissal. To put it bluntly, and to utilize a logical argument that will make much more sense in the next paragraph or two, the case has jumped on the crazy train and left logic bleeding on the highway of justice about two hundred miles back.

First case of interest, in order to prove that Jim Sterling does business in Arizona, James Romine actually purchased a t-shirt from the Jimquisition website and had it shipped to his address. The newly introduced evidence includes a receipt and a photo of the “Jim Fucking Sterling Son” t-shirt ordered from the website. Romine takes a moment of the court’s time to note that his brother coined that term. Romine also notes that he has been subscribed to Sterling’s Patreon for three months now.

In what appears to be a case of lacking awareness, Romine is now invoking the case of Ventura V Kyle as precedent for defamation in cases where the defendant was not in the same state as the trial. Ventura V Kyle is described as “a case with no winners,” where Jesse Ventura sued Navy Seal Chris Kyle after the latter claimed to have punched Ventura in a bar. Ventura’s reputation was severely damaged after he continued the lawsuit against Kyle’s estate after Chris Kyle was fatally shot at a gun range in Texas in 2013, the events adapted into the film American Sniper.

Don’t worry, it gets stranger. Romine goes on to compare the case as being “precisely the same” as being run over by a series of cars. I’m going to attach the full paragraph because paraphrasing wouldn’t do the full quote justice.

“It is precisely the same as being hit with a car in Arizona by an out of state resident passing through. In this case, The Defendant’s ‘car’ is actually an Internet semi with a camera attached to display the show of The Plaintiff being run over to The Defendant’s subscribers and then is followed by a thousand more cars following The Defendant’s lead.”

To sum where the case is up to this point: James Romine filed a motion to amend his complaint, which Sterling responded to with a motion to dismiss said amendment as pointless because the defense believes it can have the case thrown out before it goes to court primarily on the grounds of lacking jurisdiction and that his comments were a matter of opinion. Romine filed to have the dismissal dismissed, making claims that Arizona’s district court does indeed have the jurisdiction and that Sterling’s comments are a matter of fact.

Get it? Got it? Good. More on the story as it develops.

IPE Update: Motion To Dismiss Digital Homicide Lawsuit Presented


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Romine V Stanton refers to the ongoing lawsuit between James Romine (Digital Homicide) and James Stanton (Jim Sterling) over alleged defamation by the latter causing damage to the reputation and sales of the former. Last we heard, James Romine had filed a motion to amend his complaint and is now suing for over $15 million in damages, including $5 million in emotional distress. The defense, on April 5th, filed a motion to delay their response which was granted with the new deadline being May 5th.

Well the deadline is here and the response was filed yesterday, finally giving us a response from Stanton and his lawyers, of which he has two. James Romine is still being represented by himself, owing to the fact that he can’t get a lawyer to take his case. The brunt of the 31 page response aims to persuade the judge to dismiss the case on the grounds that Arizona does not have jurisdiction over the case, seeing as Stanton has no presence in the state, makes no sales in the state, nor is he aware if anyone does or does not watch his videos from Arizona. Humorously, he also notes that he has never even visited the state.

Stanton’s response is a motion to dismiss the case, defending his writing/videos as protected speech and that commentary on DHS is clearly opinion. I’ll let Stanton sum it up:

 I am appalled that my opinions and writings on the subject of DHS, its games, and its use of an alias on the Steam service to distribute its games can serve as a basis for a libel lawsuit. As a writer and entertainer, I am well within my legal right to express my opinions, disclose my discoveries, and be part of online commentary regarding video game companies like DHS and video game distribution services like Steam. The Article is clearly protected speech and use of words like “chicanery,” “the Wet Bandits,” “weirdness” and “weeeeird” to describe DHS is clearly opinion.

MMO Fallout will have an update hopefully early next week on how Judge Tuchi rules.

IPE Update: Judge Strikes Digital Homicide Complaint


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Small In Plain English update on the Digital Homicide v James Stanton (Jim Sterling) lawsuit that took place over the past week. On April 13th, James Romine filed a 77 page amended complaint against Stanton. If you don’t have a drink and perhaps a snack, don’t bother getting up to get one. This is simply an alteration of the previously submitted lawsuit and doesn’t contain much new information other than an increased demand for damages. Romine is now suing for $15 million in total, including $4 million in product damages, $5 million in emotional distress, and $6 million in punitive damages.

As we’ve reported in our previous coverage, plaintiff James Romine (Digital Homicide) is not represented by a lawyer, which might have come in handy since Arizona court requires you to file a motion to amend. Romaine did not do so, and as such the judge has struck down the amended complaint. As part of the ruling, Judge Tuchi also gave James Romine until the 27th in order to file a motion to amend.

As always, MMO Fallout will update you will continued coverage as it appears.

(Source: Arizona court dockets)

Digital Homicide, Jim Sterling, Lawyers, Slander, And A Lesson In Legality


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Digital Homicide is an enigma. All but one of its games carries a “mostly negative” rating on Steam, its games are critically panned mostly for being lazy, uninspired hobby projects cobbled together with pre-made Unity assets, and the developer is constantly getting into childish squabbles with internet critics like Jim Sterling. Despite the overwhelmingly negative response to his games, Digital Homicide continues to pump out more and more asset flips. As of this writing, DH has 18 games on Greenlight.

If you don’t follow Jim Sterling on Youtube, you may not be aware of the ongoing feud between the Youtube personality and Digital Homicide over the former’s very negative coverage of the latter’s video games. The back and forth banter culminated in a rather lengthy interview last July in which Digital Homicide threatened to sue Sterling. Nearly a year later and it looks like Digital Homicide is making good on their word, and has filed a lawsuit in Arizona district court.

Now neither side are discussing the details of the lawsuit, and for good reason. Talking about a court case in the middle of litigation can backfire and potentially lose the case. Basically lawyers are afraid that the person will say something stupid or incriminating and wind up blowing their arguments. James of Digital Homicide wants to make the details of the case very clear once it is over.

I have an excellent lawyer very interested in this case but they only take retainer. Very few lawyers take contingency now for defamation lawsuits.  For this reason I will also be documenting the process of this lawsuit(not the contents or personal information) and making it publicly viewable after the case is over so that others in similar dire situations can figure out how to defend themselves from online harassers and defamers.

Very few lawyers take contingency for defamation lawsuits because doing so would likely mean not getting paid. Luckily, you don’t have to wait for the case to be over to view, as MMO Fallout has access to the Arizona public court records and will be adding this case to our In Plain English coverage.

Despite his claim of an “excellent lawyer,” James has gone ahead and filed the lawsuit early. An attempt at crowdfunding his lawsuit of Sterling was quickly shut down over claims that people were charging and then quickly using chargebacks to hit Romine with fees. Court dockets list James Oliver Romine Jr. as a “Pro Se Litigant,” meaning Romine is representing himself without a lawyer. Romine is claiming in excess of $2.636 million $10 million USD in libel property damage. Romine has invoked 28 US Code 1332 which grants district court jurisdiction in civil matters where the damages exceed $75 thousand and is between citizens.

Interestingly, the case also invokes International Shoe Co. V Washington, a lawsuit from 1945 in which the courts ruled that a shoe company with salesmen that sold shoes in the state were subject to Washington jurisdiction when the state sued to recover unpaid unemployment fees. Romine is claiming in the dockets that Sterling’s videos being available in Arizona is enough to give jurisdiction even though Sterling himself does not live within the district.

Romine is suing Sterling and claims in his blog post that he will be suing the people leaving anonymous mocking comments, whom he believes to be overseas competitors, and is simply building a case file for the time being.

If you believe being anonymous will prevent you from recieving said justice you will be surpised when the summons shows up, this goes for competitors in foreign markets using alternate accounts as you may be foreign by you will be sued in the US. This is the first case. More are expected to be filed soon.

What Romine may not understand about US defamation/slander law is that winning the lawsuit is heavily slanted against the plaintiff, especially when dealing with a public figure such as himself. The plaintiff is required to prove, beyond a doubt, that their reputations were harmed as a result of the allegedly slanderous material. In order to prove harm, Romine must provide quantifiable damages.

Romine claims he has been falsely accused of:

  • Stealing artwork
  • Stealing assets
  • Flipping projects with no work put in
  • Doxing
  • Had products misrepresented with intention to do damage
  • Of illegally using another companies name
  • Conducting illegal business activities
  • Impersonating someone
  • Being incompetent and unable to perform my job

For the record, Digital Homicide was caught stealing assets and artwork which Romine admitted to in his interview with Sterling and blamed on being a new developer, the same interview containing a thinly veiled threat of doxing, and we have covered here on MMO Fallout that Digital Homicide has used multiple company names in the past, including one of an established developer.

As is custom here at MMO Fallout, we will be offering regular updates as they become available. I may space out coverage depending on how quickly the case proceeds because access to the documents is not free and can very quickly add up and get expensive depending on how many there are and how long each document is.