Digital Homicide Tries To Commit Digital Suicide By Suing 100 Steam Gamers

You’d think that in 2016, developers would realize that their actions could have consequences, but that doesn’t seem to be the case for those who work at Digital Homicide. This developer has been pushing less-than-stellar games to Steam for a while, and as you’d expect, the reviews reflected that. But apparently, Digital Homicide took grave offense to that.

As a result of the company’s games getting so many negative reviews, it decided to do something almost mind-numbingly dumb: it pursued the option of suing some 100 gamers who wrote less-than-positive commentary about one of its games.

Digital Homicide’s 1 Ball 2 Win

While it’s not uncommon to see negative reviews written for undeserved games, Digital Homicide’s game collection has often been called “shovelware”; the kind of discount game collection you might find on a neglected shelf in a Walmart electronic section.

Digital Homicide puts an $18 million price on 100 negative reviews, as that’s what it’s seeking in court. The suit alleges that these gamers are guilty of harassment, stalking, and even cyber-bullying.

Fortunately, this isn’t something Valve is about to put up with. As soon as the company discovered what was going on, it immediately wiped out Digital Homicide’s catalog from the service. Valve’s Doug Lombardi wrote to Ars Technica that it happened because the developer was “hostile to Steam customers.”

What a stupid, stupid lawsuit.

Is there something to be said about Valve in this case, though? Steam is bigger than ever, and it feels like its level of quality has gone down. Remember the day when developers had to fight tooth and nail to get their games on Steam? How did we reach a point where absolute crap can make it to the service?