Game reviewer threatened with lawsuit following negative review

HANNAH SMITH

Criticism over YouTube’s copyright infringement policies have flared up again after a game reviewer fell victim to a vexatious copyright breach claim.

After reviewer Jim Sterling posted a harsh ‘first impressions’ video of the indie game The Slaughtering Grounds online, a developer from the game’s studio Digital Homicide returned fire with a video mocking Mr Sterling.

Several video attacks passed between the two parties until Digital Homicide filed a Copyright Act infringement claim against Mr Sterling’s latest review claiming he had used assets that were protected under copyright and belonged to the studio.

Jim Sterling later tweeted that his video had been blocked by YouTube and the studio was threatening legal action.

Mr Sterling has also been unable to monetise his video since the attack.

This is not the first time a game developer has blocked a video out of spite.

Developers of Day One: Garry’s Incident filed the notable false DMCA strike against reviewer TotalBiscuit last year following a review that slammed the game for technical bugs and poor design.

The game’s developers also proceeded to block dozens of negative reviews on both Steam forums and Metacritic,while creating decoy accounts to praise their game.

YouTube’s copyright infringement policy has long been chastised for providing corporations and studios with too much power to remove access to videos.

Details of the copyright guidelines can be found here.