Valve Removes Developers’ Games For Suing 100 Players For $18M

Valve is generally considered a chill company by video game industry standards, but there’s a limit to everything. So when development studio Digital Homicide decided to sue 100 players and tried to force Valve to divulge their personal information, all of its games were removed from Steam.

Digital Homicide is run by the Romine brothers, and they are notorious for having extremely thin skin. After receiving a ton of criticisms from players via Steam reviews, the pair decided to sue those players in an Arizonian court, Digital Trends reports.

The lawsuit documents were uploaded to Google Drive and they contain details such as the usernames of the 100 reviewers who the brothers contend were harassing them. They are claiming personal injury and are asking for $18 million as a result.

The brothers even subpoenaed the personal information of all the players they are suing from Valve, according to Polygon. Well, the company is having none of that and decided to pull all of the games by the brothers from Steam’s storefront.

Tech Raptor reached out to Valve regarding the development and Doug Lombardi responded to confirm that it’s true. Digital Homicide is no longer part of the Steam family.

“Valve has stopped doing business with Digital Homicide for being hostile to Steam customers,” Lombardi said.

As should be expected from them by now, the Romines responded to Valve’s response by threatening to sue the company. The brothers are also defending their actions by saying that they only decided to pursue legal action against the reviewers because Valve did nothing about the reviewers and their criticisms. They demand to feel safe while doing business on Steam and not have to worry about customers saying anything bad about them or their games.

With Valve recently changing the way reviews work on Steam such as prioritizing relevant reviews and filtering potentially fake accounts, it could be argued that the brothers have a point, Engadget points out. Abusive reviews certainly pervade the retail site, but suing the reviewers is hardly the most sensible course of action.