Industry Video game industry Website digitalhomicide.ninja Founded 11 June 2014 Video game The Slaughtering Grounds | Area served Worldwide Headquarters Yuma Type of business Private | |
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Founders James Oliver Romine Jr.
Robert Romine Key people James Oliver Romine Jr.
Robert Romine Products The Slaughtering Grounds | ||
Digital homicide studios down the rabbit hole
Digital Homicide Studios L.L.C. is an American video game developer based in Yuma, Arizona. It was founded on June 11, 2014 by brothers James and Robert Romine. The company has used multiple pseudonyms on their releases, including Imminent Uprising and ECC Games (later changed to Every Click Counts Games). Their first game, Forsaken Uprising, was released into Steam Early Access on August 14, 2014, and fully released on December 3, 2014.
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In 2016, the company filed a lawsuit against video game critic Jim Sterling, who, in a YouTube video, had given their second game The Slaughtering Grounds negative feedback. Sterling was accused of "assault, libel, and slander", with Digital Homicide Studios seeking US$15 million in damages. This was followed by a lawsuit seeking US$18 million damages from 100 Steam users, accusing them of "personal injury" over negative comments, resulting in Steam removing all of the developer's games from the platform due to hostility towards customers. Both lawsuits were later dropped.
Lawsuits
Digital Homicide Studios' first fully released game, The Slaughtering Grounds, was released on October 31, 2014. The game did not attract much attention until it was criticized by Jim Sterling (formerly of The Escapist) as a "new 'worst game of 2014' contender", citing its poor graphics, numerous glitches, bad controls, short music loops, and use of pre-made models and textures not made by the developer. Sterling also accused the developers of deleting negative feedback on the game from Steam's review page, as well as banning users who criticized it. The developers responded by filing a take down notice over Sterling's video.
On March 4, 2016, James Romine filed a lawsuit against Sterling for "assault, libel, and slander", seeking over US$10 million in damages, which was later upped to US$15 million. On September 12, 2016, he filed an additional lawsuit against 100 Steam users for "personal injury" for a total sum of US$18 million. This was followed by a request for a subpoena against Valve Corporation for the identities of those 100 users. Later that day, Valve removed the entire catalog of Digital Homicide Studios, consisting of 21 games and 15 pieces of downloadable content, from Steam, stating that Valve had "stopped doing business with Digital Homicide for being hostile to Steam customers." On October 2, 2016, Digital Homicide Studios dropped the lawsuit against the Steam users, with James Romine stating the studio was "destroyed" due to it.
After months of legal stalling and setbacks due to technicalities, on February 21, 2017 James Romine agreed with Sterling's defense lawyer to drop the lawsuit with prejudice. Romine agreed to refrain from pursuing the lawsuit and the charges launched against Sterling again, and to never file another DMCA takedown without first considering whether Sterling was engaging in fair use.