Editorial: The Digital Homicide Saga

The Digital Homicide Saga

          This week, we said goodbye to one of the most notorious developers to ever walk the industry. Digital Homicide, a small indie team consisting of two brothers, finally closed its doors after almost two years of get-rich-quick schemes, attacks on critics, and a slew of beyond terrible games, and gaming is much better for it. But even more amazing than their games is their descent into madness, and exactly how far they were willing to go to stop negative criticism.

          If you’re unfamiliar with Digital Homicide, you need to know some background before you’re properly introduced. On Steam Greenlight, there exists a trend known as the asset flip. These consist of games made entirely from pre-bought Unity engine assets dropped into a map with no rhyme or reason. Some of Greenlight’s resident scumbags seem to find these a quick and easy way to get some cash, because they pop up a lot.

          Cut to Halloween 2014. A game called “The Slaughtering Grounds” has popped up on the Steam store, developed by “Imminent Uprising” and published by Digital Homicide Studios. It was your average asset flip, made worse because it seemed the developer didn’t know how to properly polish their game. Taking damage resulted in blood splatter images ripped straight from Google Image search appearing on the HUD, picking up ammo only refuelled the gun you were currently holding instead of having specific types, and the music was a 15 second loop that even AudioJungle would call painful to listen to.

          YouTuber and games critic Jim Sterling, who plays a lot of these terrible indie games on Steam, discovered Slaughtering Grounds and played through it as a part of his first-impressions series. He called it as he saw it: an asset flip with terrible gameplay, graphics, and music, writing it off as one of the worst games he’d played in 2014.

          Digital Homicide took note of the video, and decided it was best to fight fire with fire. They reuploaded Jim’s video in what they called the first in a series of “Reviewing the Reviewer” videos. The result was the same video, but with a white text overlay calling Jim an idiot and declaring his criticism unfounded. They even went so far as to say he shouldn’t have called the music awful when you can just turn it off in the options menu.

          Jim responded by uploading a video of him watching and laughing over the video, but this just fueled DigiHom’s fire even more. They began to clear out their Steam reviews section of any and all negative criticism. At one point, they even held a contest that would supposedly give Steam keys away to whoever bashed their game the hardest. Unsurprisingly, anyone who entered the contest was instantly banned from the Slaughtering Grounds page. Later, DigiHom reuploaded Jim’s reaction to their “review”, only this time with an all-black screen and more white text, calling him and all other Let’s Players and game reviewers leeches on the industry and that by making a video of their game, he was “stealing their content”. They also claimed that by making a Frankengame of mismatched assets, they were helping fund the indie community…somehow.

          When all else failed, Digital Homicide decided to go for the most pathetic of tactics available to an angry indie developer: they filed a takedown strike on Jim’s original video. In several blog posts they detailed how they felt Jim was being “unfair” in his review, but ultimately they didn’t pursue further legal action, and the video went back up.

          And so began what can only be referred to as the closest thing the game industry has to a Road Runner vs. Wile E Coyote cartoon.

          As 2014 turned into 2015, Digital Homicide began to flood asset flips onto Greenlight, some of them getting onto the Steam store, others not. With every new project, Jim Sterling was there to look at them objectively, showing how thrown together and poorly made they were, but consistently saying that when Digital Homicide decided to take the time to make a really good game, he’d be first in line to congratulate them.

          Later in the year, Robert Romine, one of the two brothers behind the whole operation, decided to sit down and talk to Jim one-on-one. What resulted was an hour and forty minute long interview as Robert yelled at Jim incomprehensibly, attempted to dox him, and yet again calling him and the rest of the Let’s Play community leeches.

          After this, Robert and his brother James Romine sank back into the depths of Steam, and a small bout of radio silence began.

          Or so we thought.

          In the aftermath of the interview, it seemed that James and Robert realized that the Digital Homicide name was mud on Steam now, and attacked Greenlight once again, but this time under a slew of fake names. Through these, games such as Devil’s Share and Galactic Hitman made their way onto Steam under the name “ECC Games”, with several others sitting on Greenlight with various different names.

          The jig was up when Galactic Hitman was discovered through a sale as belonging to Digital Homicide, and one of the Greenlight games was added to a Digital Homicide bundle on Steam.

          After this discovery, ECC Games e-mailed Jim Sterling with some news. However, it wasn’t Digital Homicide’s sockpuppet company ECC Games. This ECC Games was a very real Polish mobile developer who were none too happy that their name was being used to sell garbage asset flips.

          The real ECC Games explained it was seeking legal action against the Romines, but before anything could go down, DigiHom changed the name of the Galactic Hitman developer to “Every Click Counts Games”. Shortly afterwards, Digital Homicide finally gave up on this scheme, revealing their presence to the world once more, and resuming their original operation of flooding Greenlight. They also claimed that they had a lawyer who was targeting Jim Sterling, but as soon as Jim himself explained he’d need to speak to his own lawyers about it, DigiHom flew the coop once more.

          2016 arrived with little to no changes. Digital Homicide was posting garbage onto Steam, and Jim was laughing about it. Then, in March, the battle came to a head once and for all. Jim posted a video talking about how Digital Homicide flooded Greenlight with 18 games within a week. This seemed to be the last straw for Digital Homicide, as they announced they were once and for all suing him for “harassment”, even going so far to ask their fans to fund the case.

          The company went quiet once more as the case went ahead, and continued to quietly put games up on Steam. Now that Jim couldn’t legally talk about them anymore, the time seemed perfect for them to get off scot-free.

          But that didn’t seem to be enough for James Romine. Months after the Sterling case was filed, Digital Homicide struck again, this time asking Valve (owners of Steam) for the personal information of 100 users who dared to give their games negative reviews, so they could pursue even more legal action.

          Valve’s response? Blasting Digital Homicide from their store once and for all. In seconds, the garbage empire that the Romines had built over the years was gone like dust in the wind. Games like The Slaughtering Grounds and Galactic Hitman are no longer available for purchase, and their Greenlight lurkers were wiped entirely.

James briefly declared war on Valve, but quickly backed down, most likely knowing that this was one battle he couldn’t win. He dropped the case against the Steam users, citing that Digital Homicide had gone bankrupt once and for all. The case against Jim Sterling remains trapped in legal limbo, as it awaits a judge’s decision on whether it should be dismissed or not. Declaring Digital Homicide destroyed, James said he would be going back into the work force.

          And so ends the saga of Digital Homicide. Two brothers who couldn’t handle any criticism, even when their work was blatantly terrible. At times, it seemed as if their situation couldn’t get any crazier, but they’d always find a way to surprise me. In all honesty, I’m glad to see them go. Had they won the case against either Jim or the Steam users, it would’ve likely had disastrous ripple effects in the Steam Greenlight community, giving anybody who created a bad game the ammunition they needed to shoot down anyone that dares criticize it. While it may not be pleasant to remember Digital Homicide, it’s crucial that we never forget them, lest this all happen again.

Song of the Week

          Battle for the Grand Star from Super Mario Galaxy. One of my favourite final boss themes in gaming, it really gives weight to the final battle against Bowser in this game.