Remember Digital Homicide? Remember how they recently started the process of trying to sue 100 Steam users, then when Valve responded to attempts to get those users by removing the studio from Steam they announced they’d sue Valve too?
Well, seems like the story might finally be coming to some sort of an end – according to Digital Homicide’s founder the studio is closing down for good along with the dismissal of the lawsuits. Don’t all cry out in anguish at once.
The cause of the studio’s demise has been put down to both the removal of their revenue from Steam, as well as funneling all the money they did have into the lawsuits they were running (with possibly the exception of the one against Sterling, which as far as I know is still being ‘crowd-funded’). Founder Romine has had an interview in TechRaptor in which he also claims that some of the harrassers on Steam he was going after were part of competitor studios.
“At least two were competitors. The case dismissal was only due to financial reasons caused by the removal of our games. I believe the case was very solid. There were in excess of 140 false statements by the 11 steam users, tens of thousands of posts harassing myself and my customers, three direct interference with written contracts with third parties by steam users (some of which were competitors), and much more. A combined in excess of 25 reports were filed against the worst users of the 11 with no resolutions being found.”
“As far as digital homicide? It’s destroyed. It’s been stomped into the ground from a thousand directions and use is discontinued. I’m going back into the work force and watching what’s really going on. Not gaming media gossip – the real stories are in the legal documents. Not talking about mine.”
While I doubt too many of you will be upset by this news, it is worth saying that Romine does at least have some point about online harrassment. As I said in my last article, death threats and threats against people’s family are not cool; regardless of any intentions to carry them out or not.
Somehow though, I’m not sure if this is the last we’ll here of Romine and Digital Homicide in some shape or form… but let’s hope that for a while no more ridiculousness emerges.
