Jim Sterling

James Stephanie Sterling (born ), better known online as Jim Sterling, is an English gaming journalist, best known for their no-nonsense criticisms of both the games they play and gaming companies they feel are either failing to take responsibility for producing poor games or or various practices that are unfair to consumers and YouTubers alike.
==Biography==
Sterling was born in the UK, although as revealed in their review for The Beginner's Guide they had a deeply unpleasant upbringing where they and their brother were beaten by their mother's then-lover,The Jimquisition: The Beginner's Guide review a Hell's Angel outcast named The Preacher, which led to them creating the character of Jim Sterling and taking on the name - a name they have expressed a wish to have legally changed.Ask.fm: I got a lot of questions about this. It's been public record for years, I just don't bring it up because as far as I'm concerned, my name is Jim Sterling. I'd have had it changed legally years ago if not for the fact that I have legal things to get through first, and one day I'll clear that off the docket and get it done. At the least, it's no different from performers like Vic Reeves or Ray Peacock using stage names, but it's a little more than that, because my "stage name" is the name I identify with the most. Some people over the years have used my birth name to intimidate or insult me. It doesn't manage to do that, but it *is* pretty disrespectful, as it ignores my wishes to be called by the name I consider myself as having. I've literally no interest in the name my absent parents gave me. I'm Jim Sterling to everybody who knows me, and it's the name I consider myself as having.
Prior to going freelance and embarking upon their YouTube career, Sterling worked as a review editor for Destructoid and a content creator for The Escapist. As for August 2018, they have contributed a monthly segment to Cultaholic called WreSterling.
==Jimquisition==
Sterling is best known for Jimquisition, a regular segment where they critique parts of the gaming industry that they see as being contemptible. Among their targets are Gearbox Software for their grossly misleading previews of Aliens: Colonial Marines and their utter refusal to take responsibility for the appalling quality of the game once it was released onto the unsuspecting public, Konami for all manner of actions ranging from erasing P.T. from existence in one of their most bizarre actions in a long list of bizarre actions during the acrimonious parting of ways between Konami and Hideo Kojima to the company's frankly appalling treatment of their franchises and employees as well as journalists and the gaming public, Nintendo for their inability to give gamers the new Star Fox game they want while simultaneously giving them a Star Fox game they certainly didn't want, indie developers who abuse YouTube's Content ID system to try and have criticism of their games removed from the platform - something which, as of March 2017, has happened to Sterling on at least four occasions - fanboy culture that has gotten so extreme that fans of games such as No Man's Sky and Zelda: Breath of the Wild are throwing around death threats at critics who dare voice the opinion that their games aren't 10/10 classics, and most famously of all their long-running dispute with Digital Homicide Studios.
There are also secondary segments which play after the episode of Jimquisition has ended: most famous of these is Fuck Konami News, where Sterling will report the various business practices of Konami that enrage the gaming community, such as using the Silent Hill and Castlevania franchises for pachinko machines rather than making actual new games in those franchises. More recently Sterling has added the Oh Ubisoft! segment where they discuss the baffling and maddening decisions made at Ubisoft, such as their 2016 announcement that Beyond Good & Evil 2 was in pre-production...even though Ubisoft had claimed at various points since at least 2008 that the game was being made, and was using that to promote other titles by Michel Ancel such as Beyond Good & Evil HD or Rayman Origins. Lastly, they also have a segment called Boglin Watch, where they talk about the current revival of Boglins, the late 80s/early 90s toys which Sterling is a fan of, and regularly uses to decorate the Jimquisition set.
==Commentocracy==
Sterling introduced a new character at the end of the 15th May 2017 edition of Jimquisition, Duke Amiel du H'Ardcore, a foppish 18th century aristocrat who would offer "Elite Gaming Wisdom" which had been culled from various comments sections in their inimitable style. Having made fleeting appearances during subsequent Jimquisition episodes, it was announced after the 18th September 2017 edition of Jimquisition that the Duke would have their own show, Commentocracy, with the first edition going live on 21st September 2017.YouTube: Real PC RPGs Are For Nerds (Commentocracy)
==Sterdust==
After the 17th July 2017 edition of JimquisitionYouTube: Steam Needs To Axe Shithead Developers (The Jimquisition) was hit with a copyright strike by WWE for the video using a two second clip from the introduction of the company's Unforgiven 2001 pay per view, Sterling responded by putting out the call asking if any of their viewers could help with a project they were working on, which they mentioned would require a lot of spandex. Several weeks later Sterling debuted a new persona, Sterdust, with the attire, makeup and even the adapted Jimquisition theme all based on the Stardust character that Cody Rhodes had been using prior to his departure from WWE in mid-2016. However, rather than being a one-time gag for the channel, soon Sterling was performing for Pro Wrestling EGO in their native Mississippi under the Sterdust name, initially appearing in a non-wrestling capacity although they have begun to compete in matches.
In January 2019 SterDust won their first wrestling championship, becoming one half of the Pro Wrestling EGO tag team champions alongside their Constellation partners Ursa Major, Joshua O'Hagen and Alex Graves holding the belts until 18th May when they lost to The Renegades of Phunk.
In August of 2019, Sterling was announced as guest general manager of Ryse Wrestling,Twitter: @ryse_wrestling Ryse will have a special guest in the house this Saturday, and a special role! Jim Sterling, host and video game reviewer, is coming on a night when Ryse is in turmoil. As guest GM for the night anything could happen! Who in the Ryse locker room is ready for #WreSterling? and, a few months later in January 2020, they were announced as new general manager of the company which also saw Sterling move from Mississippi to Philadelphia.Twitter:@JimSterling Recently, I took over Ryse Wrestling in PA, having replaced their general manager as Executive Commander. This is an expression of how I feel about this brave new era. #RyseWrestling #WreSterling #TheRulingClass https://instagram.com/p/B78xdcfHY-K/?igshid=v8l9m0uxkgkzTwitter: @JimSterling Finally made it. Kicking back at Tattooed Mom with Justin and Conrad. Hello Philly! https://instagram.com/p/B8XfxKlHPkI/?igshid=tk8l08azc05v Jim later mentioned that part of the reason they moved to Philadelphia was to work with Chikara, which never came to pass with the company closing its doors in response to the Speaking Out movement.Twitter: @JimSterling I was due to do business with CHIKARA this coming month. It was pretty much *the* goal of my wrestling career to get to that stage, but I am very glad I didn't get involved now. Maybe I'll just set up my own damn show.
==Digital Homicide Feud==
In November 2014 Sterling made a Jimpressions videoYouTube: SLAUGHTERING GROUNDS - New 'Worst Game Of 2014' Contender (aka Squirty Plays) of an indie shooter that passed the Steam Greenlight called The Slaughtering Grounds, in which they savagely criticises the game for its bad coding, poor controls, near non-existent AI, frequent glitches and overuse of generic art assets.
A few days afterwards, developers Imminent Uprising posted a response video titled Review The Reviewer that was a reupload of Sterling's original video with various pieces of text savaging Sterling superimposed on top, with the phrase "I'm Jim fucking Sterling son" - a phrase Sterling himself has since claimed - appearing frequently. In response to this Sterling reuploaded that video on their channel with new commentary on top of it because they found it highly entertaining to see a developer act like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, and around this time word got out about not only how bad The Slaughtering Grounds is, but also Imminent Uprising's public hissy fit that somebody called their awful excuse for a game an awful excuse for a game, which included their deleting negative reviews and even banning people who spoke badly of the game, as well as not giving credit to the artist whose image the developers had simply stolen for their game artwork without giving credit. Yet despite all of this, Imminent Uprising continued, posting another video entitled Review The Reviewer Round Two where they uploaded the audio of Sterling's video with text overlaid on top, accusing Sterling of being a "leech" who was hurting the entire indie developer community.
A week after this, Sterling received a copyright takedown strike from Digital Homicide Studios LLC,Twitter: @JimSterling Dear ImminentUprising, developer of Slaughtering Grounds. You DMCA-wielding cowards. You won't win. demanding a full apology for their description of the game as an "absolute failure" - and it quickly became apparent that the basis of their lawsuit was because they spectacularly failed to understand that the term "Fair Use" should not be taken literally - leading to Sterling filing a counter-claim, while YouTube allowed the takedown to expire. Yet rather than let it go, Imminent Uprising continued to claim they were wronged and were blaming the game's lack of success on Sterling and Sterling alone, by which point Sterling was recapping the entire affair on their channel.YouTube: The Slaughtering Grounds: A Steam Meltdown Saga (The Jimquisition)
Rather than learn from their long list of mistakes, in March 2016 the studio now going by the name of Digital Homicide filed a lawsuit of up to $10m against Sterling for "assault, libel, and slander"Kotaku: Angered Game Developer Sues Critic Jim Sterling For $10 Million because of their repeated criticism of the company and their games, even though in the cases of Devil's Share and Galactic Hitman Sterling was not even aware that they were Digital Homicide titles as the studio released those games onto Steam under the guise of a different company - something which Sterling referred to in a later article on their website.The Jimquisition: Digital Homicide and the Case of the Sockpuppet Developers
On February 22nd 2017, the lawsuit was dismissed with prejudiceThe Jimquisition: A Statement Regarding Romine v Stanton and soon afterwards Sterling posted a near forty-minute video detailing the lawsuit.YouTube: When Jim Sterling Was Sued For $10 Million By Digital Homicide (The Jimquisition)
In early 2019 it emerged that Digital Homicide had resurfaced, with Robert Romine now heading up the company rebranded as Digital Homicide Uncensored, with a series of blogs posted on their site blatantly misrepresenting what happened with the lawsuit while trying to paint themselves as the victims of some kind of bullying campaign instigated by Sterling, which Sterling addressed in a video tearing into some of their claims.YouTube: Digital Homicide Resurfaces With Some Incredible BS
==Brash Games Impersonation==
In December of 2020, a review of Yakuza: Like A Dragon was posted on Brash Games' website purporting to have been written by Sterling,Brash Games: Yakuza: Like a Dragon — Meet the heroes of tomorrow which brought to light how there were other reviews on the site purporting to have been written by Sterling, a claim which Sterling was quick to debunk by pointing out that not only was the review in question was not written by them but also it wasn't much of a review, either.Twitter: It's come to be attention that the notorious Brash Games started faking articles by me. Just in case there's any doubt - I do not copy and paste press releases for Brash Games.
What made this stand out wasn't the fact that somebody at Brash Games was purporting to be Sterling, but the fact that Sterling had covered the business practices of Brash Games and their boss Paul Ryan (not that one) in a pair of videos in 2017, the first of which bringing light to their business practices of not paying staff and only offering "exposure" yet if a writer left the site Brash Games would remove their bylines leaving them with nothing for their portfolio,YouTube Exposure (The Jimquisition) while the second posted a few weeks later was critical of the statement Brash Games released in the wake of their business practices coming to wider attention which tried to shift the blame onto several of the site's former writers who just so happened to be the various former writers who had brought the site's business practices to the attention of the games media in the first place while also making some frankly bizarre allegations against review aggregator Open Critic.YouTube: Paul Ryan: Not That One (The Jimquisition)
==Gilson B Pontes' abuse of YouTube's Copyright ID system==
In March of 2021, Jim posted a Jimpressions video of Taishogun Rise of Emperor, the latest in a long line of games created by Gilson B Pontes which somehow make it onto the PlayStation Store in spite their lack of quality which have long been a source of speculation about how they pass Sony's vetting process.Reddit: What is the connection between Gilson B Pontes (LGS Productions) and Sony? Soon afterwards, Sterling was informed a video posted in 2020 for one of Pontes' earlier games, Shadow The Ronin: The Revenge To The Samurai, had been taken down after Pontes used YouTube's ContentID system to have it removed.Twitter: @JimSterling How very interesting. Apparently, legendarily terrible game developer Gilson B. Pontes had a video of mine taken down. The following day, Pontes had a further three videos featuring his games taken down,Twitter: @JimSterling Minor update. A third video has now been claimed. So far it's been included as part of a single strike with another video. We're still *on paper* one claim away from buh-bye time.  If you're so inclined, feel free to download anything on the channel. and the day after that Pontes issues a copyright claim for a fifth video - which, due to the timing of the strikes looked like a coordinated attempt by Pontes to have Sterling's channel removed from YouTube.Twitter: @JimSterling So as a heads up. Gilson B. Pontes, the terrible game designer, is pretty much aiming to get my YT channel fraudulently removed. He is one false copyright claim away from it. Obviously this will be challenged, but if there are any issues, be aware this is the reason. In response to Pontes' attempt to take down their channel, Sterling the decision only for YouTube to fob them off by claiming that it was "unclear" if Pontes was abusing the copyright strike system and dragging out the appeals process compared to previous experiences where the likes of Digital Homicide did the exact same thing to try and silence criticism.Twitter: @JimSterling YouTube's new play is to say it's "unclear" if false takedown strikes are false or not. I got an email confirming @TeamYouTube is washing its hands of this situation.Twitter: @JimSterling This takedown is the same as every single other takedown they've reversed. What's changed? Why is it suddenly different THIS time? In response, Sterling and their lawyer told both YouTube and Pontes that they would not accept an attempt to have Sterling's channel removed, and soon afterwards YouTube backed offTwitter: @JimSterling Update: Some good news! Firstly, YouTube has reinstated some of the videos! Second, Gilson did indeed wait until a new day so he could file the final claim and take my channel down. At this time, YT has held the complaint until more evidence.  Promising developments!Twitter: @JimSterling I guess letting them know I am prepared to fight and have a legal team helped a lot. It sucks that you need to have that kind of leverage in order to fight this bullshit. It's sad, and incredibly tiring.  Hopefully I can now have the day off I wanted yesterday. while Sterling issued a statement about the situationPatreon: Statement On Gilson B. Pontes' Failed Attempt To Kill My Platform before going into more detail about the situation in the following week's JimquisitionYouTube: I Can't Believe A Developer Tried To Kill My Channel (The Jimquisition) while also indicating that they are more than willing to delve far deeper into Pontes and and LGS Games if they attempt anything like this again. The following day saw Pontes unleash a second wave of copyright claims, albeit this time YouTube refused to acknowledge Pontes' copyright claims,Twitter: @JimSterling Holy shit Gilson just tried to claim all the videos again, this is bananas! Failing again, since this time YouTube is actually *stopping* it, but ...how? How is he allowed to just try again? to which Sterling stated they were now exploring legal options with their lawyer. As if that wasn't ridiculous enough, Pontes launched another attempt to take down Sterling's channel a couple of days later, this time trying to take down the Jimquisition which discussed the situation,Twitter: @JimSterling Just received another takedown attempt from Gilson B. Pontes. This time he went after The Jimquisition. Fucking ridiculous. at which point Sterling made it clear that their lawyer has been informed of this.Twitter: @JimSterling My lawyer is being made aware of all of this.
==Personal Life==
In August 2020 Jim came out as pansexual and non-binary, initially going by all pronouns but eventually settling on she/them.Twitter: @Jimsterling Thanks for asking! I am happy with anything, though I personally mostly use they/them.@Jimsterling In an old tweet where I came out as NB & it was all very new, I said all pronouns were cool. Despite this being outdated for *ages*, people refer back to it when they want to still use he/him, so I deleted it.
In the 25th January 2021 edition of The Jimquisition,YouTube: Death & Taxes (The Jimquisition) Jim introduced themselves as James Stephanie Sterling, where Jim described themselves as "A trash girl from the gender dumpster." As Jim is non-binary, they are still happy for people to call them Jim.
At the end of 2021, Jim moved back to the UK with their partner Phoenix.
==Theme Tunes==
*Born Depressed by Drill Queen (18th October 2011 - 22nd May 2017)
*Stress by Jim's Big Ego (29th May 2017 - present)
==Subscriber Milestones==
*100,000 subscribers: December 7, 2014
*200,000 subscribers: April 20, 2015
*300,000 subscribers: January 4, 2016
*400,000 subscribers: September 29, 2016
*500,000 subscribers: May 22, 2017
*600,000 subscribers: November 26, 2017
*700,000 subscribers: August 30, 2018
*800,000 subscribers: May 2, 2019
*900,000 subscribers: April 8, 2020
=== Decline ===
* Below 900,000 subscribers: May 15, 2021
* Below 800,000 subscribers: February 13, 2023
==References==
Category:Gaming YouTubers
Category:Commentary YouTubers
Category:Review YouTubers
Category:News YouTubers
Category:English YouTubers
Category:Users who joined in 2006
Category:LGBT YouTubers