Valve Bans Publisher for Suing Steam Users

A small game studio has been banned from Steam after it filed lawsuits against 100 users who left the developer’s games negative reviews. Digital Homicide, a developer based in Arizona, US – described on Wikipedia as being “best known for developing video games of very low quality” – is suing Steam users for being mean about the developer and its games. In response, Valve has banned Digital Homicide from Steam “being hostile.”

YouTuber SidAlpha has obtained legal documents related to Digital Homicide’s mass lawsuit, which reveal that Judge Eileen Willett has granted a subpoena for James Romine – co-founder of the studio with his brother, Robert – to demand the personal identities of every anonymous Steam user listed in the suit.

Soon after, Valve removed all of Digital Homicide’s games from Steam, along with all associated storefronts, community pages, and downloads. The studio quickly responded with a sprawling post on the front page of its website. According to Digital Homicide:

“The lawsuit recently filed is solely in regards to individuals where no resolution was able to be obtained from Steam to provide a safe environment for us to conduct business.”

“We submitted numerous reports and sent multiple emails in regards to individuals making personal attacks, harassment, and more on not only us but on other Steam customers who were actually interested in our products.”

The name Digital Homicide may be familiar to you: earlier this year, the developer filed a similar lawsuit for $10 million against game critic Jim Sterling over a series of negative video reviews of its games, in which Sterling accused the developer of flipping free Unity assets.

Jim Sterling’s critique of Digital Homicide’s The Slaughtering Grounds: