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Jim Sterling is being sued by Digital Homicide

R

R_thanatos

Member
About time.
Flooding greenlight with titles could only bring them so far. Glad that Valve finally stopping that nonsense.

No problem with dev using public assets in games but at some point, you can't have 40+ titles in greenlight in less than 2 years.
 
T

timetokill

Banned
So they made a game and then swapped the assets out to make several games out of it.

Ubisoft does it all the time. What's the problem?
 
Portugeezer

Portugeezer

Member
timetokill said:
So they made a game and then swapped the assets out to make several games out of it.

Ubisoft does it all the time. What's the problem?
Click to expand...

giphy.gif
 
M

mikefrails

Banned
R_thanatos said:
About time.
Flooding greenlight with titles could only bring them so far. Glad that Valve finally stopping that nonsense.

No problem with dev using public assets in games but at some point, you can't have 40+ titles in greenlight in less than 2 years.
Click to expand...

Why not? What constitutes "too much game production"?
 
H

Hylian7

Member
Digital Homicide had it coming. It took long enough, but Valve finally dropped the hammer on them. Probably out of the question to remove the games that are already for sale on Steam, but this is definitely the right way to go.

RX-78-2 said:
Why not? What constitutes "too much game production"?
Click to expand...

Digital Homicide is a tiny developer that definitely could not put out that volume of games and have all of them (or any of them) be of some kind of quality. You can't tell me that 40+ asset flip games in a year isn't "too much game production", especially for a small developer? Not a single one of them is of any quality.

You know how Scott Cawthon (Five Nights At Freddy's series) put out something like 4-5 games in a year? Every single one of them, while not the best thing ever, still held a good amount of quality to them. Now if he upped that to 40 games, you can bet pretty much every single one of them would be rushed and not very good. They would have probably all turned out like FNaF world, except worse.
 
J

Jacksinthe

Banned
RX-78-2 said:
Why not? What constitutes "too much game production"?
Click to expand...

Quantity != quality.

Even a 2-man team like mine will take roughly 2.5 years to make our action platformer. A single indie game. That's because we want to not piss off our demographic of Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden fans with a shit game - so we are pulling out all the stops, straight down to shit nobody will notice.

I can't tell you how much time was spent on one-offs that will be in the game for only a few minutes, at most, like our wind system. I developed an entire procedural wind system that affects the scene, tunnels, wind areas, etc - not just "here's our start wind marker and here's our end wind marker" - I pulled out all the stops to make sure, even for the type of game it is - that it will work amazingly well, offer up more eye candy for the moment or two you spend in a level with it and be very much so transparent to how complex it actually is.

I took this approach with just about everything. Chances are nobody will know how much work went into it all and that's fine by me - because it's the nuances that go relatively unnoticed that add that extra level of polish on a game.

The game needs to have a soul. For that to happen, it takes a lot of time, a lot of love and patience.

I could easily have released our game by now but it would be shit, by comparison, to how it's going now. I could have made a "push button to jump and shoot" game but nah - I like playing good games and I'm not making garbage just so I can pump it out to make more garbage faster - I want everyone that plays it to enjoy it. That's why I do this - because I love doing it. I do love reading reactions from people who have played it in its current state because they make me smile. It's selfish - it makes me feel good when i see other people feeling good about something I've done.

We love the medium, so we respect it. Even little itsy bitsy devs like me.

You don't need a lot of time to make a good game - but making too many shows a clear lack of respect for the artform. Might as well get a 6-pack of crayons, scribble for 5 minutes and call it a Picasso.

Just my .02
 
R

R_thanatos

Member
RX-78-2 said:
Why not? What constitutes "too much game production"?
Click to expand...

Have you ever tried to make a game ? Something you're proud of , something you can show and say : "that's my work".

Doing that once take time , lot of time. At some point when you crap more games in a year than huge studios, it's obvious that it's too much.

If i have to explain it , it would be : " the self respect for one's work and for the consummer play it"
 
B

BlazeHedgehog

Member
timetokill said:
So they made a game and then swapped the assets out to make several games out of it.

Ubisoft does it all the time. What's the problem?
Click to expand...

I can't tell if this is a troll or not

Treating you legitimately, the thing here is that Ubisoft still puts in work for the assets. They have artists and designers and even if their games are all incredibly similar they still have people there who made those decisions originally and tweak the knobs accordingly for each and every game. And they end up being very, very big games, which I think is part of the reason why Ubisoft does things the way they do, because they need to save time and get the next one out every 12 months.

Digital Homicide isn't doing that. This is worse than even design by committee. It's hard to say that what Digital Homicide is doing isn't creative, but that's the best way I can describe it. There's so little actual design going in to these games, it's just... plugging in somebody else's artwork in to somebody else's template using somebody else's music and none of it was technically designed to work together cohesively, none of it is going towards any kind of unified artistic vision, it's just whatever fits in to the slot.

In Assassin's Creed, it's people working for Ubisoft, generating content for Ubisoft, that all pulls together in to one definitive product, and they're all striving to make this one specific message that says something... even if it's mostly the same message they've already said seven times.

Digital Homicide's games are like those ransom notes people make where they clip out letters from magazines and newspapers
 
I

ImaLemming

Member
Today Digital Homicide posted four more Krog Wars reskins (Barnacle Explorer Sub: Fish/Shark/Octo Rescue and Mike the Astronaut) and what I think is a Decimation of Olorath reskin. And all five have already been flagged as incompatible with Greenlight.

Maybe if they keep this shit up Steam will finally ban them like they banned Muxwell when he started deleting admin posts.
 
O

oni-link

Member
ImaLemming said:
Today Digital Homicide posted four more Krog Wars reskins (Barnacle Explorer Sub: Fish/Shark/Octo Rescue and Mike the Astronaut) and what I think is a Decimation of Olorath reskin. And all five have already been flagged as incompatible with Greenlight.

Maybe if they keep this shit up Steam will finally ban them like they banned Muxwell when he started deleting admin posts.
Click to expand...

Is there any more info on this? I've not heard of this incident before
 
I

ImaLemming

Member
oni-link said:
Is there any more info on this? I've not heard of this incident before
Click to expand...

There's a couple of topics in Steam's Earth: Year 2066 duscissions (the game's delisted, but you can still find the forum it by Googling "earth year 2066") about how he was stripped of his Developer status and banned:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/290750/discussions/0/540741131180592169/

http://steamcommunity.com/app/290750/discussions/0/540741131095506665/

In the second topic, somebody says he got banned for censoring a Valve employee:

The War Z devs never got control of their own forum back. What chance would this twit have after he tried to censor a post made by Valve?
Click to expand...
 
J

Jacksinthe

Banned
Let's not talk about OT bans or this thread will get locked.

-

ROFLMAO (been a while since i used that one)
These guys just keep doubling, tripling and quadrupling down even when Valve begins to step in. Sweet baby Jesus these guys are out of their minds.

I hope they keep slapping up more games by the day. It's funny since dn near everyone knows who these guys are so it's not like this strategy is or will ever work for them. Surely this can't be all they have up their sleeves. Surely. There has to be more shenanigans or a different business model.
 
C

CyanideFuse

Member
Jacksinthe said:
Let's not talk about OT bans or this thread will get locked.

-

ROFLMAO (been a while since i used that one)
These guys just keep doubling, tripling and quadrupling down even when Valve begins to step in. Sweet baby Jesus these guys are out of their minds.

I hope they keep slapping up more games by the day. It's funny since dn near everyone knows who these guys are so it's not like this strategy is or will ever work for them. Surely this can't be all they have up their sleeves. Surely. There has to be more shenanigans or a different business model.
Click to expand...

I would like to say that if they put a 10th of this effort into learning software development and spending time thinking of a decent game they might make something of okay quality but I guess their brains are not wired this way. Would they even be capable of making something moderately acceptable? A question that will baffle scientists for decades to come. Or not.
 
J

Jacksinthe

Banned
CyanideFuse said:
I would like to say that if they put a 10th of this effort into learning software development and spending time thinking of a decent game they might make something of okay quality but I guess their brains are not wired this way. Would they even be capable of making something moderately acceptable? A question that will baffle scientists for decades to come. Or not.
Click to expand...
That takes time tho.

I do believe they aren't interested in gamedev, rather, a business model requiring throwing everything at the wall repeatedly until something sticks. Then keep doing that.

They want to make pennies from multiple sources. Like if I want to sell you 5 yards of concrete - there's not much money to be made from 5 yards, but there's a lot of money in 5000.

Unfortunately that model doesn't work for videogames unless it's microtransactions.
 
E

Eddie Bax

Member
Serenityinaz12 said:
So I'm no legal expert, there is an update from last week that you can see here, is this saying that Romine (Digital Homicide) itself made a motion to dismiss the case?

https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/10890330/Romine_v_Stanton

re:19 MOTION to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim MOTION to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction MOTION to Dismiss Case filed by James Oliver Romine, Jr.
Click to expand...

No, the full text of that entry is "Second RESPONSE to Motion (Titled: Motion in Response to Dismissal and Amendment to Motion in Response to Dismissal as Affidavit of Opposition) re:19 MOTION to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim MOTION to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction MOTION to Dismiss Case filed by James Oliver Romine, Jr."

Ie. Digital Homicide (Romine) is responding to Jim Sterling's motion to dismiss the case by stating reasons why it believes the case shouldn't be dismissed.
 
M

mre

Golden Domers are chickenshit!!
Eddie Bax said:
No, the full text of that entry is "Second RESPONSE to Motion (Titled: Motion in Response to Dismissal and Amendment to Motion in Response to Dismissal as Affidavit of Opposition) re:19 MOTION to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim MOTION to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction MOTION to Dismiss Case filed by James Oliver Romine, Jr."

Ie. Digital Homicide (Romine) is responding to Jim Sterling's motion to dismiss the case by stating reasons why it believes the case shouldn't be dismissed.
Click to expand...
A second response, eh? Oh, judges just love it when you do shit like that.
 
H

Hylian7

Member
Eddie Bax said:
No, the full text of that entry is "Second RESPONSE to Motion (Titled: Motion in Response to Dismissal and Amendment to Motion in Response to Dismissal as Affidavit of Opposition) re:19 MOTION to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim MOTION to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction MOTION to Dismiss Case filed by James Oliver Romine, Jr."

Ie. Digital Homicide (Romine) is responding to Jim Sterling's motion to dismiss the case by stating reasons why it believes the case shouldn't be dismissed.
Click to expand...
Damn, they post had me excited that we would be getting that glorious Jimquisition about this soon.

Who knows how much longer this thing will go on at this rate. I'm curious if it will even get to court.
 
M

Mobius and pet octopus

Member
mre said:
A second response, eh? Oh, judges just love it when you do shit like that.
Click to expand...

No.

Defendant filed a motion to dismiss. Plaintiff filed a reply to that response. Defendant than filed an amended motion to dismiss. If judges hate people changing their filings, they'd be just as mad at the defendant. Back to the point, plaintiff filed a second reply for the amended response.

Hylian7 said:
Damn, they post had me excited that we would be getting that glorious Jimquisition about this soon.

Who knows how much longer this thing will go on at this rate. I'm curious if it will even get to court.
Click to expand...

So far it looks like it's been rather typical filing for motions to dismiss based on everything under the sun (standing, jurisdiction, failure to state a claim). It's impossible to tell without a very close examination.
 
E

Eddie Bax

Member
Hylian7 said:
Who knows how much longer this thing will go on at this rate. I'm curious if it will even get to court.
Click to expand...

I doubt it. Trials are rare, defamation law in the U.S. is unfriendly to plaintiffs at the best of times, and the case (from the admittedly very brief look I've given it) seems fairly weak.
 
M

mre

Golden Domers are chickenshit!!
Mobius and pet octopus said:
No.

Defendant filed a motion to dismiss. Plaintiff filed a reply to that response. Defendant than filed an amended motion to dismiss. If judges hate people changing their filings, they'd be just as mad at the defendant. Back to the point, plaintiff filed a second reply for the amended response.
Click to expand...
This isn't about changing or amending a filing. Romine, the plaintiff, has not only filed a response,which he amended (with the court's permission), but has also filed a second response without leave of the court to do so.

This is very much a procedural faux pas, especially in federal court.
 
P

pelican

Member
Primus said:
Figure Digital Homicide is finally seeing the writing on the wall, and is trying to dump as much shit on Greenlight as possible before the walls close in.
Click to expand...

DH has dug a deep hole through a combination of idiocy and the inability to create a decent title.

Untalented hacks.
 
M

Mobius and pet octopus

Member
mre said:
This isn't about changing or amending a filing. Romine, the plaintiff, has not only filed a response,which he amended (with the court's permission), but has also filed a second response without leave of the court to do so.

This is very much a procedural faux pas, especially in federal court.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure a judge isn't going to give a shit since he is filing pro se and the filing is not of substance in any event.
 
M

mre

Golden Domers are chickenshit!!
Mobius and pet octopus said:
I'm pretty sure a judge isn't going to give a shit since he is filing pro se and the filing is not of substance in any event.
Click to expand...
/shrug. Agree to disagree. Pro se parties may get some extra leniency from the courts in terms of technical issues with their filings, but they're certainly not safe from catching the judge's ire for doing stupid shit like filing a second response, especially one which apparently was without substance. I've only gone against one pro se party in federal court, and while the judge was forgiving of technical defects in her filings, he was very, very quick to set her in her place when she cluttered the docket with documents which did not need to be filed.
 
J

jacobeid

Banned
mre said:
/shrug. Agree to disagree. Pro se parties may get some extra leniency from the courts in terms of technical issues with their filings, but they're certainly not safe from catching the judge's ire for doing stup8d shit like filing a second response, especially one which apparently was without substance. I've only gone against one pro se party in federal court, and while the judge was forgiving of technical defects in her filings, he was very, very quick to set her in her place when she cluttered the docket with documents which did not need to be filed.
Click to expand...

Agree with this post wholeheartedly.
 
M

mre

Golden Domers are chickenshit!!
Commanche Raisin Toast said:
When these things are filed does it set back potential trial dates further? Could always be DH trying to delay things.
Click to expand...
More likely than not, the judge has not even set a trial date. No scheduling conference will have been held yet at this stage in the litigation as Jim hasn't even filed an answer, and won't unless his motion to dismiss is denied.
 
S

Sayad

Member
Read the title as "Jim Sterling is being used by digital homicide" while skimming through gaf's first page and smiled at how true that is. Jim gave them way more than they deserve.
ImaLemming said:
According to SidAlpha, Digital Homicide is now suing 100 Steam Users.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKqxAFHqQ7k

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B6FG7o2HBZWlbHRCcXJpSDNibm8?pageId=105390416713216118855


EDIT: And according to MMOFallout, they're subpoenaed Valve for the personal information of those 100 users.

http://mmofallout.com/james-romine-subpoenas-valve-for-steam-user-details/

Just... oh my...
Click to expand...
How does this work? Do they dox people to get their IRL info or are they expecting ButtScratcher355 to show up in Cort after sending him a steam msg?

Edit: just saw your edit!
 
Barakov

Barakov

Member
V

Veelk

Banned
I don't understand.

I can see how they might think they can get away with suing Jim Sterling. They obviously can't, but suing one guy is atleast comprehensible, within the bounds of plausibiltiy.

How the fuck do they think they can get away with suing 100 people and make 18 mill out of this?

They can't possibly think they'll win....what the fuck do they think their going to walk away from this with?
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Veelk said:
I don't understand.

I can see how they might think they can get away with suing Jim Sterling. They obviously can't, but suing one guy is atleast comprehensible, within the bounds of plausibiltiy.

How the fuck do they think they can get away with suing 100 people and make 18 mill out of this?

They can't possibly think they'll win....what the fuck do they think their going to walk away from this with?
Click to expand...

I doubt the subpoena will actually go anywhere. Valve will challenge it.
 
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