"Game developer" sues game critic for $10 million

[yourbeliefs]

In more news about "Game Developers" abusing laws...

Dentola Studios filed a DMCA takedown notice on YouTuber SidAlpha's channel because he had the gall to alert people that their "games" were merely Unity Asset Flips.



If you don't know what an asset flip is, this is a good explanation:



TL;DW: Unity Store sells assets, which are essentially base games that provide building blocks for new developers to start on their own games without having to code everything from scratch. These often come in the form of fulling functioning systems. An asset flipper will take this, and rather than make modifications and enhancements to make it their own, they simply resell it on the Steam Marketplace or whatever storefront doesn't have any quality control.

Anyways they did this, and now a guy who (at time of writing) had only 2,441 subscribers and who's most popular video had 95k views, has now been brought up by such YouTube Heavyweights (no pun intended) as Jim Sterling and Total Biscuit.

So by trying to silence Sid by abusing the DMCA takedown tool, Dentola has just made themselves look like idiots and conversely made Sid and his case more well known.

It's amazing how few people learn from history. Then again, if you're trying to resell stock Unity Assets, knowledge isn't one of your strong suits IMO.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Well, after long last:



Judge finally dismissed the case with prejudice. This means Digital Homicide can't reopen the case or do any similar lawsuits against Jim.



Here's my views on the whole thing:

 

[king3pj]

Well these guys ruined any chance of continuing their career in game development. If they would have stopped after Steam dropped them they might have been able to get hired in as a small part of a bigger development team a few years down the road. After dragging this nonsense out for so long I can't imagine anyone is going to want anything to do with them.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Well these guys ruined any chance of continuing their career in game development. If they would have stopped after Steam dropped them they might have been able to get hired in as a small part of a bigger development team a few years down the road. After dragging this nonsense out for so long I can't imagine anyone is going to want anything to do with them.

The worst part (as I mentioned in this video) is that now this guy's name is forever tied to this stupid lawsuit and Jim Sterling. Imagine if whenever someone Googled your name, the top results were an embarrassing 18 month period of you being a massive dick to people all while being on the wrong side of an argument. Even if this guy does repent on and moves on to become a more productive member of society, assuming he doesn't go through some sort of identity change this will be what comes up.

That's basically all the amount of sympathy I have for Romaine though. He and his company put out crap games, couldn't take valid criticism, and then tried to abuse the legal system to shut up people and get his way. Hopefully this case sets a good precedent to prevent other people from trying to do the same thing.

 

[navychop]

Counter suit.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Counter suit.

I doubt that'll happen. Not that I know Jim on anything resembling a personal level, but just from what he's put out there I think he just wants this to be over and done with. Besides, what exactly is Jim going to sue for, in terms of a reward? Romaine doesn't have anymore money, so in this case it would just be something out of spite, and I think Jim feels that his lawyer has received enough money for his services in this case so far.

And besides, this whole case has (for the most part) been a positive for Jim. It's gotten his name out there to more people, which is important in his line of work as his money is from YouTube revenue and his Patreon. Speaking of the latter, that got a significant boost right after the lawsuit was filed and is still at a high level. Still, as nearly anyone who has been through litigation can attest to, you'd rather not have to deal with the damn thing in the first place. Point being, he couldn't claim any sort of damage to character or anything along those lines in any sort of counter suit.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Jim has finally released a statement on the dismissal. As I expected, he's basically upset it went as far as it did but glad its finally over, and doesn't have any plans to countersuit.

http://www.thejimquisition.com/a-statement-regarding-romine-v-stantons-dismissal-with-prejudice/

 

[yourbeliefs]

Jim posted this today:

 

[yourbeliefs]

And here's the video about the lawsuit from Jim.



This goes more in depth than previous videos have, including numerous excerpts from the written complaints. After hearing about some of these, I think Romaine has gone from being just a major scumbag to someone who I think may really be mentally ill.