I remember seeing and reading about their original game, The Slaughtering Grounds, when it first came out. I didn't realize they had spiraled this far out of control though. I was (cringingly) looking at their website and then their game bundle. Sarah to the Rescue has different versions (it's all ultimately just Space Invaders), but with a different asset for the enemy sprite (singular, one sprite, not multiple sprites)?!? Then Merle Wizard Extraordinaire (title misspelled), is the same thing with just another overhaul in images? So is Not In My Crapper? A lot of their games are like that, as was pointed out here earlier, but I couldn't believe it until I actually saw the videos on the bundle page.

How can someone actually believe those games are at all good? It's more than the flood of crap in the app store too. There you usually see reskins of games by other developers, trying to get some sales via mistaken identity. Here it's like they are just releasing different versions of the same game as a way of hitting more search terms? Monkeys, and snakes, and lions, oh my! Maybe this will set a standard though, all the developers like Digital Homicide will think they can sue Valve too, Valve will remove all their games from Steam, then we can get back to actually seeing good games listed for a change? One can only dream.

you're unfair, i just looked at those sarah games and there are at least 2 different sprites! (the ennemy changes, but so does the amno, snakes don't eat bananas!)

I think apart of "troll reviewers" we should also talk about "troll devs", which Steam seems to attract quite a lot of. To be fair, many of the big AAA Studios are "troll devs" nowadays with some of the shadier business driven decisions being taken to ridicolous heights.

And some reviewers rip on them for it too. Which is good. If something is sh*t, players need to be aware of it.

Now, when the development team size is in the hundreds, and the developers actually creating the game often have little say in business decisions that lead to an unpolished piece of crap sold at AAA prices, or an unfinished gem being sold more often, with the only way of "completing the gem" being paid DLCs, the blow is softened somewhat because its just some faceless "corporate commander" ((c) angry joe) that is responsible for the devs trollish ways.

When the studio is a small Indie shop, things get very personal very quickly. If they constantly try to troll their customers, nobody can say "it wasn't my decision" when its just 1-2 developers involved.

On the other hand, true, the weight is shifted when it comes to the reviewer > dev relationship. A big youtuber with millions of viewers can simply crush such a game like a fly, while for the AAA studio he would just be an annoying fly robbing them of maybe some few single digit percentages of sales at worst. A single very vocal customer posting a review can be a serious threat.

But again. Digital Homicide Studios has shown times and times again that they are very unfriendly to their customers. By obviously creating bad games as a business practice, not because of missing skills or with the intention to improve upon them. By getting their knockers in a twist over a bad review by a notorious youtuber known for ripping upon games, trying to silence his (maybe too negative, maybe not) opinion with a lawsuit.

Now they overstepped the line clearly by entering another lawsuit against their own customers, or potential customers. That is a no-go. Steam did they right thing to kick them from their store.

Really, its nobodys but the troll devs loss. Their games were bad anyway, and there are way to many intentionally bad games on Steam already. A good pruning can only help. Hopefully Valve will step up their game and go against other devs that overstep a line between "shady business practice / ripping off customers" and "actively trolling their customers and pissing off steam users".

I watched some Jim Sterling, and a lot of Angry Joe vids.... of COURSE they live off the reviewer ripping on bad games. Of course the reviewer gets pissed and angry on purpose.

But is it the reviewers fault that the game is so bad? No. Is he preventing the dev from selling his lazy crap? No. Is the dev going to loose some of his anyway low sales? NO! Because just as many people will buy the game BECAUSE its a lazyass, broken as hell piece of crap, as people might have bought the game before thinking it was an actual, legit try to make a good game. Maybe even more given nobody has heard from the dev, and the games screenshot most probably already show what you can expect: A lazy cash-in.

Maybe some troll devs should take advice from the show biz: There is no bad press. Any press is good, as long as your name and face is in it.