Anyone who thought that Valve’s action yesterday against Digital Homicide was going to be the end of the story, think again. The studio’s put out a statement about Valve’s actions and they’re not happy, saying that they’re going to… file another case of legal action this time against Valve.

Anyone else getting deja vu right now?

For those of you who’ve somehow missed out (and why? Go read the other article I linked in the first paragraph!), Digital Homicide have gotten a bit of a reputation for churning out games that are very similar and, it has to be said, not really that great either. The entire debacle started when they took offence at a review of one of their games by notorious critic, Jim Sterling. That ended in a lawsuit filing against Sterling for ‘libel and slander’, one that they’ve turned to crowdfunding to get running (no, seriously).

Due to this, a group of Steam users set up a group called Digital Homicides to act as some sort of self appointed watchdog group for the games the studio churned out. The studio got fed up with this, and filed a second lawsuit against some 100 Steam users for harassment among other things. In order to get the real names of these users they filed a subpoena with Valve to get those names. And Valve, having had enough of this, removed all of Digital Homicide’s games from the Store, as well as all traces of any Greenlight games they put up – past, present, failed, in-progress and successful. Ouch.

Still the funniest thing to have come out of this.

Now on their site the studio has made a statement stating:

“I’d like to give some context to [Valve communications director Doug Lombardi’s] offficial statement: “Valve has stopped doing business with Digital Homicide for being hostile to Steam customers.”” What has actually transpired was a lack of resolution from Steam in regards to moderation of their platform which might sound like a tough job to do, but coming from a company that brags its profitability per employee is higher than google, it just shows a reckless disregard for for the well being of their community for profits.”

They then go on to assert that this means that Valve is supporting the user’s harassment of them, saying that it’s okay for these users to threaten families and the lives of Digital Homicide staff, but that if they attempt to seek reparations that’s not allowed.

“The only thing that prevented me seeking legal counsel for a long list of breach of contracts, interference with business, and anti-trust issues was the fear of losing my family’s income. Since that has been taken away I am seeking legal representation. The case will benefit from a long list of organized documentation of events that have happened over the past 2 years including dates, screenshots, emails, and more on over 100 infractions in need of litigation.”

The statement ends with an e-mail address for anyone interested in taking up the case to contact them.

Let’s get this out of the way now – death threats on the Internet, while often never seriously meant, are not cool and neither are threats against a person’s family or friends. However, deleting fair if negative criticism of a work, as well as threatening legal action against people who don’t like your work is also not cool and does not win people over to your way of thinking.

This probably isn’t over by a long shot. Stay tuned for more updates.