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The spite is strong in this one.

C
CrypticCat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cksuRZym6_A

Digital Homicide, a developer who wears an oversized mantle of the 'indie-dev' variety (to put it mildly), once again finds himself as the focus of Jim Sterling's critique, what in itself has become clickbaiting made art. The entire tone of the video and the clear intent of it is questionable.

Set aside the fact that Digital Homicide aren't even capable of coding their way out of a wet paper-bag, there's a drive present to create and beyond that drive hides a two man team that surprisingly enough for the unwashed masses of the internet's underbelly are human beings. John Bain (Total Biscuit) has said that once you put your game out there for the public it is open to criticism and I agree with that. Once it is out there and a developer puts a price on it, then professional appraisal should logically follow. Or at least criticism on a level that's open and fair if professionalism comes at a premium. A skill lost on John Bain too by the way as he oftenly puts his views on games as the one and true word on how a game should be in the world according to Total Biscuit. Megalomania in games-reporting does exist, though I respect the way John Bain wraps it in innocent looking giftpaper. That's a skill in itself.

Yet, when critique becomes a concerted effort to destroy people then whatever the target does or has done has become moot. Jim Sterling's latest video is not about the game, it's about the person behind the game and Jim Sterling's desire to become the first youtube celebrity to drive someone to suicide. It seems like a questionable lifegoal to me, but here it is.

First of all, perspective is needed. By the very fact that Steam offers the possibility of self-publishing, Digital Homicide has a right to exist and to put their efforts on Steam. Rationale suggests that DH's efforts are better served appearing in the public domain, something like Diviant Art, where badly drawn half naked elven girls with anatomically unfeasable assets exist next to true gems of sunday art, but then for people who fancy themselves developers. However, Steam is open to anyone who has $100 to spare in the hope to double up on it. That makes the 'wrong place' discussion for low quality indie-studios entirely pointless. Steam allows for it, so Digital Homicide is rightfully there doing what they're doing. A criticaster of games shouldn't be the judge of who does and who doesn't belong on Steam. The mere notion that a youtuber and his fanbase think that it is on them to decide is too preposterous to contemplate, but again, here it is. A criticaster of games should find out of a game is any good, leave a fair review of that game behind and move on.

Secondly there's such a thing as consumer-responsibility. The mere fact that something exists doesn't mean that you're obliged to acknowledge it and shell out money to own it. And if you (generic you) decide as a Steam-user to have nothing to do with a game, then what's your business hanging around on a game's storepage harrassing developers?

Jim Sterling sounds very happy with the fact that his fanbase now descends on low quality developers without him making it so. He appears to see himself as an arrived opinionator who is above accountability for what his followers are doing, alluding to all of it being outside of his control now. There's not a moment in his video where he stops to consider what he is doing to another human being, there's just gloating over what he has achieved in his crusade against an extremely low-fi indie-dev.

I have at several points tried to get in contact with the public face of Digital Homicide, a guy called Robert, but he has sofar declined to answer. I don't think that Robert in his capacity as DH's public face is a victimized underdog. The man has an uncanny knack of building a straw house and then setting it on fire himself, though at the same time I seriously question if myself would behave differently if I found myself the anvil of Jim Sterling and his fanbase. The video reposted here is at the time of writing this less than 24 hours old and has almost 30k views. No amount of media-training prepares someone for that level of unmoderated bumnuggetry. I would've liked to learn how all of this affects a person regardless of position and port-folio. Robert's behavior shows all the signs of a person who feels relentlessy persecuted in the court of public opinion with no way out. He's the deer in Jim Sterling's headlights.

This story will have no happy end.

If anything, more than indie-devs of any ilk, youtubers should be reigned in if they fail to understand that what they do can have devastating results. Digital Homicide's products are woefully cringeworthy, but the company isn't harming anyone. Not even the DMCA they levied on Jim Sterling in the past did anything to hurt the man's bottomline, who by his own boasting collects 10k a month from his Patreon alone. Jim Sterling is however actively and maliciously out to hurt people, spurring on his fanbase to finish what he started while hiding behind them.

Youtubers do have a responsibility, but they have too much freedom to ignore that responsibility. There's nothing governing them, there's no clear set of rules. I believe that youtube shouldn't be used to conduct personal vendettas and most certainly not by someone who reaches 247.280* people three times a day, every day.

*Jim Sterling's current number of subs to his youtube channel.


Comments (2)

C
CiaranORian·
Poor DH have managed the whole Sterling campaign in a terrible way. There is no such thing as bad publicity. If they had handled this in a different way the PR could have been a huge opportunity for them.
C
CrypticCat·
Absolutely. At the start, all of it could be explained away as Robert being a guy unprepared for the darkside of the internet (The underbelly of wannabe 4chans I count Jim Sterling under too.) making mistakes. Inexperienced as a developer and inexperienced in how to handle public criticism. The roundtable discussion between Jim Sterling and Robert, which I also reposted in my blog, underscores this even further. It came chronologically after Jim Sterling already had embarked on his anti-DH crusade and it shows that Robert didn't learn much from it. He went into the discussion unprepared and he tried to discredit Jim Sterling with topics that weren't fact-checked but sounded good to a noob who wants to destroy back. There was no way that Robert could win with that against a wordsmith of Jim Sterling's level and as a result Robert got steamrolled and he lost any simpathy that might have been present there as a result. Notwithstanding Robert's relative inexperience with handling someone who can take 24 hours a day to troll an easy target, he should've taken the criticism on Slaughtering Grounds as a to-do list. The talent is there, if Deadly Profits is anything to go by. The ideas are there, the willingness to invest to make it happen is there and the drive to create is there. I'd say that DH has all the makings of being a shovelware-company that puts out low-fi games that are at the very least worth a play-through. It's not as if he wants $10 for the next UnitZ asset-flip. I feel that Jim Sterling is taking it too far. He has made his point and is now merely pushing to see how far he can drive Robert until the man snaps and does something unrepairable. It's disturbing that Jim Sterling is already setting himself up as the one person who can't help what's happening. He's making sure that can play the victim-card if and when Robert is driven over the edge. Jim Sterling should realise that Robert is no match for him at all and leave the man be. There's a market for DH's games and Steam allows for it. Jim Sterling doesn't have any ground here, apart from the fact that in the past, DH issued a DMCA against him...