Valve apparently did not take kindly to the lawsuit filed by game developer Digital Homicide against users who wrote bad reviews on the company's games on Steam; the "Half-Life" developer-turned digital distribution company issued a ban against Digital Homicide on the platform in response.
All titles developed by Digital Homicide have now been removed from Steam, according to a report by Ars Technica. The ban was implemented by Steam owner Valve, after Digital Homicide filed a lawsuit claiming for damages the company apparently incurred after a host of users posted negative reviews on Digital Homicide's works.
A posting of Digital Homicide's lawsuit on Scribd labelled about 100 Johns and Jane Does, 11 of which had their Steam user identification specifically mentioned. The lawsuit indicated several counts of apparent "harassment," "Stalking," and "cyber-bullying" Digital Homicide claimed were done by the Steam users against them.
Digital Homicide is one of the lesser-known game development studios using Valve's Steam platform to distribute their games to audiences. One of the most well-known games from the company is 2014's "The Slaughtering Grounds," which was a first-person shooter survival horror game that received widespread attention after Jim Sterling of The Escapist issued bad reviews against it.
Sterling was also one of the first targets of Digital Homicide in the studio's efforts to sue those who give their games bad reviews, with Kotaku reporting earlier this year that the studio filed a lawsuit against Sterling for $10 million. The legal battle between Digital Homicide and Sterling continues to this day, a conflict that the studio flared up even more with its efforts to sue Steam users.
James Romine, co-founder of Digital Homicide, was granted a subpoena by an Arizona court that allowed him to demand Valve's release of identification data of users on Steam despite the privacy concerns. Onn its part, Valve banned Digital Homicide from Steam and removed the company's games with an email sent to Vice' Motherboard confirming the issue due to the studio "being hostile to Steam customers.
Digital Homicide issued a response on its web page detailing its side of the story. Romine claimed it was Valve's responsibility to handle the abusive comments his company has received, including screenshots of Steam's page as examples, and said that Valve did not properly commit to this responsibility.
