Shovelware developer Gilson Pontes abusing copyright takedown against criticism.
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Tag: Jim Sterling
Hotcakes: Digital Homicide Is My Quarantine Drug
It is an unhealthy pleasure that keeps me up at night.
Continue reading “Hotcakes: Digital Homicide Is My Quarantine Drug”
IPE: Romine V Sterling Lawsuit Dismissed With Prejudice
The lawsuit by ex-Steam developer James Romine against Youtube personality James Stanton (Jim Sterling) looks like it is officially over, as Romine has presented stipulation for dismissal. The lawsuit, which started more than a year ago, has been dismissed with prejudice, meaning Romine cannot bring the same charges by the same evidence back into court again, ever. As part of the dismissal, Romine has also agreed to stop filing frivolous DMCA takedown notices against Sterling’s videos without first considering fair use.
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).
(Source: Court files)
Homicide By Any Other Name: The Latest On The Romine Case
Here at MMO Fallout, the dead truly never stay down, and nothing says painstaking existence quite like the story of Digital Homicide and the lawsuit by James Romine against Jim Sterling. Those of you new to this discussion are going to have to read the archives, after going on two years of discussing what Digital Homicide is and what they do, frankly I’m sick of retelling the same story every other month. When we last left this story, the judge had dismissed Romine’s case unless he could present a counter-argument through an attorney. Key part of this phrase, through an attorney. Keep that in mind for the weeks ahead, it is very important.
Since Romine decided to file yet another 73 page document, I went through and plucked out some of the more interesting facts/claims that were made this time around. See below:
- Romine is now claiming that Jim Sterling is a direct competitor, as Sterling is “a member of a development team” currently working on a Steam release, thus alleging jurisdiction in Arizona because said game will no doubt be sold in Arizona.
- The idea that Romine has been using alternate accounts to put out other games and hide his name, because having either Romine or Digital Homicide attached to your name is guaranteed rejection by the gaming public, has basically been solidified in legal documents. Romine planned on using the Micro Strategic Designs name to ‘rebrand,’ an effort that was ruined because the developer messed up and accidentally placed the game in a Digital Homicide bundle, thus revealing the connection.
- The goal at the time was to completely retire the name Digital Homicide, because the name itself was irreparably damaged thanks to bad press and extremely low rated games.
- Romine believes that it is unfair for Digital Homicide’s poor reputation to follow to a new company owned and operated by the same people.
- How easy it is to game Steam Greenlight: According to the court documents, Attrition: Nuclear Domination made it through Steam Greenlight with just 500 yes votes. If you’re wondering how all of these bad games get through, here is your answer.
- Romine has more alternate accounts, under the names Vampier Straud, TheMac, SimplebutFunGames, and Micro Strategic Designs. There are seven total, four owned 100% by Romine.
- Valve nearly gave Digital Homicide the boot in 2015: According to the documents, Valve nearly gave Digital Homicide the boot in October 2015, stopping only because Romine begged (his word) them not to, promising to remove his future products to avoid having everything shut down. Incidentally, Valve would ultimately terminate their business with Digital Homicide following aggressive legal action from the latter.
- Someone sent a bag of poop by mail to Digital Homicide. Don’t do that.
How will the court respond? There’s only one way to find out. Tune in next time, folks.
IPE: Romine V Stanton Lawsuit Dismissed, With Special Caveat
You thought it was over but it wasn’t, or at least it soon will be. James Romine’s lawsuit against Jim Sterling may have hit its final note after a long and rather ridiculous back and forth, with the revelation that the lawsuit has been dismissed. For the course of this lawsuit, you may have been misled to believe that Sterling’s focal point was on the fact that Arizona did not have jurisdiction over the case, and therefore would need to dismiss it. Far be it from me to violate the law by offering legal advice as one without a license. In reality, however, Sterling’s lawyers have focused on whether or not Romine is the proper entity to bring the case.
For instance, a cashier cannot sue a person who damages the store they work at, the store has to do it.
Now the law can look the other way on said rule if the corporate entity can be claimed as an alter ego of the individual. In this case, however, since the two Romine brothers own Digital Homicide, said rule cannot be used, since Romine did not make allegations that the acts of development were carried as an individual rather than as a corporate entity, specifically arguing that the defendant (Sterling) targeted the company itself and claiming damages that were suffered by the company rather than himself as an individual. The court does note that Romine included emotional and financial distress, however.
One issue I’ve been harping on this whole time, to an unnecessary extent, is that James Romine did need, and always will need a lawyer if he’s going to even have a chance of seeing this lawsuit go to trial. You see, while individuals can bring lawsuits pro se (without a lawyer), companies cannot. Digital Homicide would need legal council which nobody is willing to crowdfund, which no lawyer will take without upfront payment, and of which the company cannot afford after destroying their own business by attempting to serve Valve with a subpoena causing their contract to be terminated.
So Romine can’t bring lawsuit against Sterling for damages against DHS’ finances, unless he can prove to the court that he can, but DHS cannot appear in court pro se and needs to be represented through legal council, so the court has granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss, as well as denying Romine’s last two motions to amend as moot. Romine has until February 10, 2017 to file an amended complaint or the case will be dismissed entirely. It is important to note here that said complaint must be filed by a licensed attorney.
IPE Update: Digital Homicide Needs A Lawyer
(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.)
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.
IPE Update: Run Over By An Internet Semi Update
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
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
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
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.
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