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Valve Bans Developer From Steam After It Sues Customers Over Bad Reviews (arstechnica.com)
From an ArsTechnica report: A game developer has been banned from Steam after users claimed that it had attempted to sue 100 users of the platform for $18 million -- for the crime of leaving bad reviews. Digital Homicide, which has released dozens of small games mostly available for a couple of quid each, had its titles removed from Valve's popular digital distribution platform on Friday night. Its boss, James Romine, was granted a subpoena by a court in Arizona apparently allowing him to demand the release of "identification and associated data" of anonymous Steam users. The lawsuit listed in turn the misdemeanours of dozens of John/Jane Does, which include counts of "harassment," "stalking," and "cyber-bullying." In a brief e-mail sent to Vice's Motherboard at the end of last week, Valve's marketing veep Doug Lombardi confirmed that "Valve has stopped doing business with Digital Homicide for being hostile to Steam customers."
I like those guys!
"Romine's GoFundMe account, set up to fund the suit, has made just $425 of his $75,000 goal, even though he claims he "received a pile of feces in the mail" and that he had had messages saying things like "Your wife is a whore," and "I hope you die in a fiery car crash.""
Romine is a guy who does not get teh net.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
And credit where credit is due, I haven't had the Steam client do something amazingly stupid in ages.
On the other hand, what happens if these paragons of virtue somehow lose control of the company?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
More like Digital Suicide! Hur-hur-hur — I'll see myself out.
+0 Meh
quid is definitely not teenie language, the term has been around for a **very** long time, several hundred years. It refers to english currency, 1 pound sterling to be exact.
Agreed, it is fairly hard to understand foreign languages like Great Britainniash..
To clarify a couple of quid is around 500 Albanian Leks
It's British English for a UK pound (the unit of currency used there, worth a dollar and change), and it's about as much "teenie language" (I assume you mean language used by teenagers) as "a buck" is in the US (when referring to a dollar.)
Which is not to say I think it was the best choice of word for a Slashdot summary.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Digital Homicide is known for this type of shit. I have lost count of the times Jim Sterling has brought them up whenever they were screwing around again.
It would be nice to see Valve/Steam finally getting up to some quality management and start kicking out the assholes and doucebags. Digital Homicide is a very good start.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Just in the event that those who still don't understand, 500 Albanian Leks is about 320 Bengladeshi Taka.
Yeah, but I thought it was 20 pounds, but perhaps that's a stone.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
For the non-english speakers a quid is equal to 1.3 bucks.
When I go buck hunting, I bring home two whole bucks. Anyone who tries to walk off with two-thirds of my buck will get an ass full of lead. :P
Poacher!
I don't think I can use a poacher to cook buck.
Ah, I know that place. All my computer RAM is made there.
> one of the shipboard currency substitutes was the otherwise useless saltwater squid that they would sometimes catch.
There are many possible explanations, and that is probably the least likely. Probably most likely is that it comes from 'quid pro quo' (trade one thing for another).
A substitute currency is far more likely to be something like cigarettes/tobacco or rum which has some value to many members of the group. If you catch "otherwise worthless" squid from time to time, why on earth would you give trade good rum to get another worthless squid? There are two requirements for currency. It must a) a medium of exchange and b) a store of value. In prison (or on a ship), I can get cigarettes from you today and use them to buy soups next week. If I get squid from you today, next week I have ... well I've long since thrown that rotting squid overboard.
I suspect he knew that- he was just practicing "American Exceptionalism" to try and rile people up. Only Americanisms are acceptable on the World-Series Wide Web.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Or about 250 Trillian Zimbabwean dollars.
Play Command HQ online
Harold Rhodes was famous for his electric pianos made in the 1960s to 1985, until digital keyboards rendered every electric piano obsolete. By the late 1990s, Rhodes pianos were becoming popular again and Harold was looking to put them back in production. Joseph Brandstetter took over the company and assets after Harold died of Alzheimers in 2001, and new Rhodes pianos went back into production under his watch.
Unfortunately Brandstetter turned out to be an aggressive trademark bully, suing any website or musical instrument company using the "Rhodes" trademark. He made the fatal mistake of making infringement threats against the largest collection of potential Rhodes customers - the website fenderrhodes.com where fans of the "vintage era" Rhodes piano hang out to discuss all things Rhodes. Brandstetter managed to p!ss off the members and site owners so much that no discussion of Brandstetter's pianos are permitted at all. In an act of defiance, the website never changed its name. News got around the web and sales dropped off. A few years later, Brandstetter was seeking buyers for his company. I don't know what became of it, but the outcome of that fiasco was that few of the new pianos ever made it out of the factory.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
When I moved to the USA, I was briefly confused as to why the Steak and Kidney pies tasted different. Turns out they have steak in over here. (See also, Cut-me-own-throat Dibbler.)
So we should expect a UK remake of the classic John Candy flick as "Uncle Quid"?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.