I'm not entirely sure how we're supposed to "objectively" talk about them without mentioning Jim Sterling when I'm sure most of us wouldn't even know who they are without Jim Sterling. Hell, how can I even discuss their attitude or world views without alluding to stuff like the interview they did with him or their feud? Even the stuff I know about them that has nothing to do with Jim still comes from the coverage/investigations he's done about them. The only thing we know of that Jim's said pretty much nothing about is, well, this lawsuit against him.
Anyway, I'll try. Digital Homicide embody some of the worst attitudes in Indie development. They are creatively lazy, for gods sake their most well known game is basically a shit version of Killing Floor. Seriously guys, Slaughtering Grounds? If you're going to use bought assets that's fine, I genuinely see no difference between that and paying an artist to make the assets, but at least have some artistic cohesion to the game, make the models look like they exist in the same world. If that wasn't bad enough, let's go into the fact that they basically make the same game with new assets. Wyatt Derp 2 is literally Wyatt Derp with the camera changed, and both of those are the same as Withering Kingdom Arcane Wars except with different assets! Temper Tantrum is a game where you play as a small boy literally just running into furniture to break them while avoiding weird jelly monsters in the same 3(?) looping maps. Temper Tantrum is again the same with just different assets. ELT: The Extra Large Testicle seems to be similar to those as well, but honestly there wasn't enough in the trailer to make that assumption.
Plus, considering Unity Asset piracy is apparently a big thing, they might not even be buying the assets, which would explain to me how they manage to make so many games considering they don't actually seem to get that many sales (seriously, their latest "Thank God for Digital Homicide" bundle has something like 18 games for $0.99. Is it all about the trading cards?). Note, this is merely speculation and at the very least they do seem adamant that they are buying the assets legally from Unity and Shutterstock.
Then we get to the fact that, according to Steam users, Digihom had a habit of censoring criticism and calling any kind of negative reviews "harassment", although I can fully believe that some of Jim's audience are harassing them which is a dick move on their part. I really couldn't get behind the whole "Pay us to sue Jim" fiasco with people donating specifically to cancel and get charge backs or however that worked.
We then get to the fact that Digihom allegedly has a history of operating under different aliases, some of which allegedly were being used other real life companies. The one mentioned in their litigation being ECC games which Digihom claims is different because Digihom were actually "Every Click Counts" but there was also the whole thing were they called themselves (I believe they have fessed up to this) Xenobyte studios which was either behind the "Jim flips the bird" Tumblr (where the blog complained Jim's "Fuckonami" t-shirt was copyright infringing) or the "Jim doxxes himself" Tumblr (where the blog used footage from Jim's Halloween Jimquisition to figure out where he lived and place that on the net). I'm sure there was another one I can't think of.
Like others have mentioned, I kind of feel sorry for the Romines. From the interview I get the impression that they genuinely don't think of themselves as being in the wrong, and that Jim is bullying them. They've basically scapegoated him as the only reason their games don't do well and there's a certain sadness to hearing Robert desperately try to get Jim to acknowledge one good thing about their game (I mean, the gun sound effects were from a professional site guys!), but then they have to ruin my goodwill by accusing all game reviewers as "leeches", complaining that Jim made it personal by critiquing their games while in the same breath calling him a childish idiot or by insinuating that Jim is misogynistic because he has the penetrator weapon from Saint's Row. They seem to like games, but don't actually seem to understand game design, that just plonking you into a map with some enemies and a very limited set of "missions" doesn't necessarily make a good game.
I just can't can't tell if there's something actually mentally wrong in how one or both of the works, or if they're just so self-deluded that they can't have that moment of self-awareness in their design. Either that, or they're just maliciously opportunistic, hoping to score a quick buck of some poor saps and irritated that they got found out by Jim. It's kind of fascinating watching them work.
