Chapter 1: After the Scuffle
On August 8th, 2016, I uploaded my first video on Digital Homicide Studios,
an independent game developer who had become known for their dubious business practices.
They first entered a wider public consciousness after game critic and video producer Jim Sterling
exposed their pattern of buying pre-made assets and using basic Unity code to churn out games,
a process Jim Sterling named "Asset Flipping."
Despite their litany of poor games and re-releases
which consisted largely of existing games with slightly altered visuals,
they were able to avoid Steam's quality control by hiding behind multiple different company names.
Enraged at the negative exposure Jim Sterling was giving them,
the two developers behind Digital Homicide Studios, James and Robert Romine,
began openly attacking Sterling through videos, which he invited.
Jim Sterling: "And so there it goes on and on like this! They said they do the whole thing, there we are."
"Umm. *Laughs*"
This eventually culminated in a $10,761,000.00 lawsuit,
which was faltering at the time my video was released.
I expressed a hope that this would lead to an end of the Romine brothers' bizarre behavior,
but instead it only intensified.
Chapter 2: The Subpoena
For some time, James and Robert Romine had been embattled not only with Jim Sterling,
but with negative commenters and Steam forum posters,
especially after Digital Homicide Studios had been featured by Jim.
They would typically either respond vitriolically, or more commonly, by deleting or locking the thread in question.
In response, a Steam group was created called "Digital Homicides: POOPGames,"
which dedicated themselves to identifying poor games on Steam.
Their description reads in part, quote,
"Have you ever been banned or censored by a *Homicidal* developer?
Are you tired of a game that isn't worth its *Assets?* If so, *Digital Homicides* is the group for you."
"Digital Homicides is a dedicated consumer-advocacy group and censorship safe haven", unquote.
Beyond this group, online gaming publications and Youtubers had begun covering the actions of Digital Homicide Studios.
By this point, Digital Homicide had been experiencing backlash for well over a year.
Fed up with the prevalence of detractors and emboldened by his rudimentary legal skills,
James Romine filed a new lawsuit against 100 individual Steam users on September 12, 2016,
for a total of approximately 18 million dollars.
This new lawsuit began even before the one against Jim Sterling had concluded,
and it also lacked any sort of legal counsel.
James had scoured the internet for writings made by these users,
pulling from Steam forums, Reddit threads and Tumblr posts,
compiling them into a single lengthy document to present before the court,
accusing them of numerous slights such as stalking and harassment.
The document spanned 123 pages.
James requested that the court subpoena Valve for the personal information of these users.
The presiding judge conceded this to James and submitted the subpoena,
but Valve did not take to this kindly.
Rather than acquiescing, Valve contested the order, which would require further action from James.
But Valve's response would go beyond the court.
They also removed all of Digital Homicide's games from their storefront less than a week after the subpoena,
announcing unequivocally in a statement to TechRaptor that this was in response to the lawsuit against their customers on Steam.
They even went so far as to announce this in the recent news section of some of Digital Homicide's games for those who owned them.
Mysteriously, around this time, those people who had bought Digital Homicide's games
also found that the entire Digital Homicide catalog had been added to their Steam games library.
After this, James requested a dismissal of his suit against the 100 Steam users in an effort to recover his court fees,
which was inevitably granted.
TechRaptor requested a few words from James Romine
and what they received was perhaps more than they were expecting.
James' replies seemed to lack any comprehension of the criticism leveled against him
and were written in somewhat questionable English.
He stated that, quote,
"It is important thing to note - Digital Homicide didn't file a dismissal or a case.
The company had pretty much nothing to do with the case other than some evidence.
Which was why we were surprised by the result", unquote.
This statement is technically correct as James was suing as an individual,
and not as the company Digital Homicide Studios.
He also suggested himself as a martyr saying that
"We may have been painted in a negative customer light by gaming media,
truthfully we've been fighting for lower prices and a more open market -
which to me is the most important thing for consumers"
He also attacked Valve for their lack of moderation, likening the situation to, quote:
"A mall charging you rent for a shop and mall security staying at the donut shop all day while you get mobbed and looted"
Against other developers leaving critical reviews he stated, quote:
"This would be like the next shop over in the mall coming next door and posting signs on my business with false information on them.
How is that logically allowable?"
Perhaps of greater interest was his statement about the fate of his company. Quote,
"As far as Digital Homicide? It's destroyed.
It's been stomped into the ground from a thousand directions and use is discontinued.
I'm going back into the work force and watching what's really going on"
Of his reaction to negative comments he said, "We weren't some evil censoring dudes.
If someone didn't like the game, they could leave a bad review and refund - no hard feelings here at all.
The problem real problem was reoccurring returning attackers for in some cases 20 months.", unquote.
But even as Digital Homicide Studios was dissolved and the subpoena was dropped,
James Romine would redouble his efforts into his last remaining lawsuit.
Chapter 3: The Suit Continues
Despite these setbacks, the suit against Jim Sterling was still trundling on.
Of note was an egregious mathematical error where James incorrectly added his numbers
so that his written total was $800,000 less than the actual sum.
When presented to a judge the case was found to be of woefully inadequate construction.
But instead of dismissing it entirely, the judge granted James Romine the opportunity to amend the wording
so that it would align with legal standards.
Taking some of the recommendations of the judge, James indeed changed certain elements of the document,
but he also added one change of his own.
Instead of ten-and-a-half million dollars, he was now asking for $12,550,000.
But his edits proved not to be enough.
The lawsuit was partially dismissed again on January 13th of 2017 for one reason in particular.
James Romine was suing as an individual for damages to a company.
This left James with two options:
He could either sue as Digital Homicide Studios, or amend the lawsuit to show the damages to his person rather than the company.
The former option, however, came with an important caveat:
a company must be represented in court by a state-approved lawyer,
but for reasons then unknown, James would not sue as Digital Homicide Studios
and so he set about amending the lawsuit a second time.
He returned soon after with the documents, but if Jim Sterling is to be believed,
this amended writing was even more nonsensical than the first two iterations.
Jim Sterling: "But my lawyer informed me that the level of distress referenced
is on par with stealing somebody's child and pretending the child had been killed."
What's more, the dollar amount being demanded had inflated again from twelve-and-a-half million to $15,326,000.
Beyond the money, numerous other things had been added during the lifetime of the suit
including poorly founded allegations of civil conspiracy.
After this third document was submitted, James Romine was finally forced to speak to Jim Sterling's lawyer.
What exactly transpired is uncertain, but whatever was said to James,
it finally convinced to drop the lawsuit once and for all.
But not before James would attempt to commit fraud by amending an agreement without alerting Jim Sterling.
This attempt was caught before it was submitted.
Jim declined to counter-sue and the case was dismissed with prejudice so that it could not be re-initiated later.
With this, the game development of Digital Homicide Studios had come to a final halt
and James Romine's game industry efforts were squelched.
But while James was busy with the lawsuit, his brother had been at work.
Chapter 4: Work from Behind the Scenes
Over the course of the lawsuits, Digital Homicide's critics were watching the company carefully.
In November of 2016, while the lawsuit against Jim Sterling was receiving its first rewrite,
a few particular changes had been made to their website 'digitalhomicide.ninja' and were spotted quickly.
Video taken of the site by YouTube user 'Crestfallen Philosopher' shows the changes as of November 5th, 2016.
The opening page had transformed into large advertisements for giveaways on Steam and itch.io,
as well as games for sale on G2A.com.
Side note: G2A.com is a digital game re-seller that has been criticized for its arguably unethical business practices.
Thieves will often use stolen credit cards to buy games and list them on G2A
before the card's original owner recognizes the theft and reverses the transaction.
People will also buy keys cheaply from poorer regions, then sell them for more on G2A.
Scrolling down the page, this person discovered the name for an apparently new company: Loot Toot Games.
The links provided here directed people to this new company's Facebook page,
offering free game giveaways and sharing gameplay footage.
On this pages sidebar, a large number of Digital Homicide's games were listed, offering free Steam keys for them.
To go along with these web pages, a YouTube channel was created
where dozens of game trailers were uploaded, accompanied by links to G2A.com.
There was also gameplay from Digital Homicide games, and videos labeled 'Loot Toot Quick Plays',
where a small amount of original gameplay footage was featured for games being advertised.
In one instance, for a video of the game 'Sky Drift,'
the player seems to give up part way through the race, purposefully crashing into walls in a bout of frustration.
In February, around the time the lawsuit against Jim Sterling was ending,
Loot Toot would also create a Twitter account, which somehow managed to quickly acquire over 100,000 followers.
This Twitter account began to post links to the trailers on their YouTube channel, games on G2A.com and kinguin.net,
and the giveaways on the Digital Homicide website.
At the same time, the Digital Homicide Twitter account also began mass posting these links.
During this time, there was a drought of YouTube content until February 11th,
when a short video was posted of a clip from 'Predator 2', apparently in support of Digital Homicide Studios
"See? There's no stopping what can't be stopped."
"No killing what can't be killed."
On April 1st, the Facebook account began to post links to 'loottoot.net' instead of 'digitalhomicide.ninja.'
Soon after, the Loot Toot Twitter began to do so as well, and the Digital Homicide URL was changed to redirect to 'loottoot.net.'
It was also at this time that the YouTube channel was purged of all of its game trailers,
dropping the total views on their videos by almost 600,000.
But it wasn't until a month later that some clarifying statements about the lawsuit and Loot Toot Games were published.
Chapter 5: The Crackdown
On May 7th, 2017, Loot Toot Games attempted to update the Steam page for their game 'Not In My Crapper'
under the name Loot Toot Game Works.
But after a few reports to Valve, it was swiftly removed again.
This event was covered by some of the YouTubers tracking Digital Homicide,
and there was a stir over the possibility that the Romine brothers were going active again.
More onlookers were made aware of the connection between Digital Homicide and Loot Toot Games
and they began to spread this awareness.
Again, interest grew. Though this time it was far smaller, it was enough to rile some to action.
On May 20th, two people left one star reviews for Loot Toot Games on Facebook.
While most other negative reviews had gone without retort so far, these two triggered a response.
The first review partially reads:
"Guys seriously can you stop with this nonsense?"
Yes, people have managed to do this before and will manage to continue to asset flip and get away with it.
But once you've been caught doing it there's no way you'll get away with it."
Loot Toot attempted to brush this off by replying 
"no idea what your [sic] referring to"
However that same day, another person left a review warning people of the previous practices of Digital Homicide Studios
and this elicited a much stronger response.
Over a few longer replies, details about Digital Homicide, Loot Toot Games and the court cases were revealed.
Loot Toot games wasn't created or managed by James, but rather by Robert Romine alone.
About Digital Homicide, he claims that financially speaking, he lost, quote,
"...more than you'll make in your lifetime."
Before he emphatically defended the practices of his now-defunct game studio.
He also revealed more about the lawsuits that James had attempted to perform. He said, quote:
"Did you know the case wasn't "thrown out" it was voluntarily dismissed by my brother
because attorneys threatened to involve me in the case and I told him
even though I agreed with him I couldn't put my family through that financial stress so he dropped the case.
If you want to be angry at someone for fleecing people of their hard-earned cash
talk to the used cars salesmen that runs steam."
"Also, it is too late I reinvested my earnings so I literally lost around $500,000 and 2+ solid years of my life
when my games were removed from Steam so it isn't an option anymore,
which is why you see me handing out free keys trying to generate some ad revenue to supplement my now-defunct income."
Five months later, the YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook accounts are still posting an endless stream of links,
while the viewership on the YouTube page has stagnated to hundreds instead of thousands of views per month
Perplexingly, the Loot Toot Twitter page has over 200,000 followers, as does Digital Homicide,
yet their posts rarely received more than one like or retweet, suggesting the use of false accounts to bloat their follower counts.
The Facebook page is similar, but to a less extreme degree with approximately thirty thousand likes and follows
with some posts clearly being promoted, while others remain mostly barren.
With attention on them waning and their finances decimated, it seems that the Romine brothers are again falling into obscurity.
And hopefully, this time, that is where they will stay.
