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Not content with being a bothersome fly on Jim Sterling's wall, Indie "developer" James Romine of Digital Homicide, is now going after 100 anonymous Steam users. To make what is arguably a long (and stupid) story short, Romaine has been in a legal battle with Jim Sterling for well over a year now.Essentially, Digital Homicide accused Sterling of "assault, libel, and slander" after he put out a video blasting them for their low-effort and low-quality games. You know, as Jim Sterling tends to do with games that are out on Steam Greenlight and even Steam Early Access. There was some stuff there about how Digital Homicide (may have) stole assets for their games. There was also some stuff there about how Digital Homicide (may have) went by several different names. Really, it's a lot of stuff to wade through and it's been well over a year or two in the making now. For a good catchup, I honestly suggest seeing all of the Digital Homicide tagged news posts over at MMO Fallout. It will get you up to speed in a bit.
Yadda, yadda, yadda: Digital Homicide sued Jim Sterling. They sued him for $10 million (USD). They put up and subsequently took down a crowdfunding campaign. They put up and subsequently took down a page on their website talking about the lawsuit. They have opted to represent themselves in this case. They later amended their lawsuit and upped the amount to $15 million.
Now, if that weren't crazy enough, Romine from Digital Homicide is also suing 100 anonymous Steam users... for $18 million. $18 million for "personal injury."
James Romine has opted again to represent himself in this lawsuit. He's gone so far as to submit a subpoena to Valve, filed in Phoenix, to discover the identities of those 100 users. Why go after these specific 100 users? Because they said some not so nice things about Digital Homicide in the past. The lawsuit has been assigned to Magistrate Judge Eileen Willett in Arizona.
There multiple multi-page PDF documents of the lawsuit. It literally includes lines that read "JANE/JOHN DOE 1 - aka Steam User DemonSword" under the defendant area. It gets to the point where they stop including Steam names and just say "JANE/JOHN DOES 12 through 100" at the end. I kid you not. You can even look for yourself right here (courtesy of SidAlpha)! Look at that. It even has screen grabs of some of the "offensive" posts included in the lawsuit documentation. Here's one of them now.
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There is no doubt that Valve, Valve's legal team, and the United States legal system will treat this with the respect it so very rightfully deserves.
(via MMO Fallout and SidAlpha)
Hopefully this is thrown out without causing more undue stress, obviously Jim Sterling did say things which a company could consider to be slander, and his position as a critic would cause damage to the company however minor, but he should be protected by freedom of speech. As for random people, that's just messages on forums and shouldn't even be considered.