When faced by a slew of negative user reviews, Digital Homicide studio decided to sue those reviewers instead of listening to them and improving the game. Now, Valve has decided to make the studio pay the ultimate price for threatening its users: it delisted all their games from Steam.
Digital Homicide subpoenaed Valve asking it to reveal the identities of 100 users who posted negative reviews so that the studio can address them in an $18 million personal injury lawsuit. Valve found the studio's actions to be "hostile to Steam customers" and responded by terminating the studio's contract.
Unsurprisingly, Digital Homicide has a different take on the situation. The studio claims that they filed the lawsuit only after Valve failed repeatedly to moderate the user reviews and comments even after being contacted by Digital Homicide. According to the studio, the lawsuit is filed only against "a handful of users" who harassed the studio's employees as well as other Steam users and made personal attacks and death threats. Digital Homicide believes that Valve failed to make Steam a "safe environment to conduct business" by not removing those threatening comments.
Digital Homicide listed a few of the reviews that - they believe - should have been removed for being too threatening. One review for Starship: Nova Strike simply said "I want to murder every single person responsible for this." Another comment was directed to one of the studio's staff who was told that his kids were unlucky to have a father like him.
Moderating user comments is always a subjective and delicate matter, but we don't really think that the examples posted by the studio can be read as actual death threats. In fact, we believe that - in today's world - if you can't handle internet attacks, you have no business being on the internet. Especially when you actually sell a [warning: extreme toilet humer] game solely about flinging shit.
