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Awesome / Jimquisition

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  • Many Five Nights at Freddy's fans will know that Scott Cawthon was inspired to make that game when a video of one of his previous games trashed the character models as looking like nightmarishly creepy animatronics, which initially depressed Scott until he got the idea to actually make a game about nightmarishly creepy animatronics. Here's the thing: that video? It was this one. That's right, Jim Sterling was (indirectly) one of the biggest contributing factors to the creation of that runaway hit series, so FNAF fans, you all know what to do: thank God for Jim Sterling. And, as mentioned below, Jim did an entire video praising Scott for taking their initial criticism in stride and doing something constructive with it, holding up Scott Cawthon as a shining example of humility and good work ethic of indie developers.
    • Even while their opinion of him changed following revelations that he was financially supporting Donald Trump and anti-LGBT politicians, Jim still calls out against harassing and doxxing him.
  • Their video on "The Case for a Gay Shepard," made in response to people who apparently didn't get that their reading of gay Mass Effect fanfiction was in response to people complaining about homosexual romance options in Mass Effect 3. Jim points out the Logical Fallacies used by people who were against a gay Shepard, saying that if you don't want your Shepard to be gay, s/he won't be, and it's really dumb if you go out of your way to see the gay content, knowing you'll be offended by it.
  • Any of the videos Jim makes where they use the success of one particular title to shame the shady and/or dodgy practices of the industry as a whole
    • Their video "Time To Get Paid" used the success story of PAYDAY 2 to shame companies like Square Enix and Capcom who called their recent game launches as 'failures' as they hadn't generated enough revenue to cover their massive development costs, whilst PAYDAY 2 had been made specifically for a pre-existing player base (those that liked the original) without going overboard on their spending during development. The end result was a polished game that netted the developer Overkill their own pay day before the game officially launched.
      • Unfortunately, it became less awesome when Overkill added microtransactions to the game despite specifically saying that they wouldn't, and this was after they refused to patch the console versions and told people to buy the game on PC instead. Though, as Jim reported during 'The Blacklist' (in a post-credits scene), Overkill earned some props for actually owning up to their mistake, something that Jim even sounded a little surprised over.note 
    • Jim's video on "How Skyrim Proves The Industry Wrong" points out that Skyrim didn't need online passes, day-one DLC or a tacked-on multiplayer mode in order to be a huge success (it sold 3.5 million copies in just two days). It also didn't need to copy the really big sellers like Call of Duty to be successful, either. Essentially, Jim took the worst business practices of the industry, and exposed them as being needless Executive Meddling that was designed to wring money out of customers by showing a shining example of a game that succeeded without using a single one of those practices.
      • Again, this also become less awesome when Bethesda collaborated with Valve to incorporate a Paid Mod system, making it so that mod makers would have the option to turn their mods into mini-DLCs, with Bethesda allegedly taking most of the profit. Despite the system being savagely torn to pieces by the furious community and later abolished by Valve, Bethesda is still planning to implement the system under a different form.
      • And became even worse when Bethesda released the "Creation Club", (basically paid mods first on Fallout 4, then (soon) on Skyrim) which deserved its own Jimquistion video.
    • Their video on Doom Guy highlights one of the most understated, yet awesome parts of Doom (2016), that being the Doom Marine himself. Despite not uttering a word in the game, Jim shows that the Doom Marine is in fact more well-written and a much more fleshed out character than plenty of other FPS protagonists, and even a lot of other genre protagonists either. Through nothing more than a camera and two arms (and two legs), id and Bethesda have made it very clear just what the Doom Marine thinks about any given situation, about the people around him, and just how much the guy does not give a flying fuck about anything that isn't about killing demons, making him more than just another cut-and-paste silent shooter man.
    • Here's one not for the game itself, but more for its developer: A Lesson in Five Nights. In the video, Jim explains that the developer of Five Nights At Freddys, Scott Cawthon, not only took the criticism about his game Chipper and Sons Lumber Co.—more specifically, Jim's criticism that the creatures looked like nightmarish animatronics—and instead of lashing out in defense at the critique like other indie developers have done, Scott rolled with the criticism, making his next game entirely about nightmarish animatronics. Jim goes on to say that they admire Scott's work ethic and humility, what with him pulling FNAF World from Steam for being "not good enough", offered an apology and full refunds for anyone who wanted it regardless of playtime, improving the game, and re-releasing it for free. Keep in mind that before he pulled it from Steam, FNAF World was doing well for itself and had a high Steam user review rating (ironically enough, it had a rating of 87%). He didn't need to go as far as he did, but he did solely out of his own professional integrity. Jim says that while they do not like the Five Nights games personally, they have nothing but respect for Scott, stating that all the success that he gets from the franchise is well earned.
    • They praise the Yakuza series for its open world design in their video Yakuza's Open World Is Biggest And Bestest, stating that whereas other games go for giant worlds with copy-pasted quests, boring collectables and other such low-effort content, the Yakuza series, in particular Yakuza 0 has a comparatively tiny open-world with Sotenbori and Kamurocho (though they mostly reference Kamurocho), the sheer density of well-crafted content, activities and quests within each far outpace its rivals in terms of player enjoyment, comparing the game to Beneath a Steel Sky in how it uses a relatively small area of real-estate to the fullest through quality characters and interactions.
  • On the flip side, the "Hate Out of Ten" video calls out fans for making ten out of ten (and other such perfect scores) the expected score for a game, instead of a sign that a game is truly flawless.
  • "Why An Always-On DRM Console Would Be Dumb Dumb Dumb" ends with Jim putting the people pushing for Always-On DRM in their places, specially one Adam Orth, now infamous for telling gamers to "Deal With It".
    You know, I find it funny that the Microsoft mouthpiece answered concerns about the always on-line console with the phrase "Deal With It". And that's an attitude a lot of mainstream publishers have right now! "Don't like what we do? Deal With It, we can take your custom for granted!". Well... No, you can't. We're in a console industry right now that sees EA and Square Enix lose their CEOs, because even though they're selling millions upon millions of games they're still not hitting their fiscal targets. They're failing after selling upwards of 3 million games per release, and that's ridiculous! The console market is practically in a crash, and people like Adam Orth, they're not in a position to say "Deal With It" anymore, because... It's all drying up for them. There's more competition than ever, more luxuries for us to turn our eyes to should we get bored of one of them. There's the mobile market that they're so scared of. There's the independent scene which is going very, very well. And when enough of the audience is split apart and been cast out and alienated, and gone elsewhere, and these titans of the industry are left on their knees and wondering where everybody went, where all their loyal, taken-for-granted customers disappeared to, there's only one thing we'll be able to tell them: Deal With It.
  • Regarding the controversy surrounding the female character designs of Dragon's Crown: sure, Jim personally doesn't like the designs (except for the Elf), but they don't let their personal opinion get in the way of something that needs to be said about the topic and about the gaming community as a whole. Both sides on the subject need to stop fighting and arguing over who is right or wrong, and instead start having civil discussions where people can have exchange of ideas, learn from them, understand each other, and form a compromise.
  • It's not controversial to talk about how threatening to kill someone or their family is bad, especially when the threat is over not liking a script they wrote. However, it's another thing entirely to discuss this Aesop in an episode called "I'm Going To Murder Your Children," which perfectly illustrates the point Jim is trying to make.
  • Jim in "Copyright War," talking about a series of YouTube copyright claims that game publishers have started doing.
    "...Ultimately, the best YouTube personalities need only their personalities to succeed, so best of luck to them. At the end of the day we don't need any of you, game publishers. For anything. And that's what really upsets a lot of you, isn't it? We don't need you! Look at me, look at the Jimquisition- I never needed ANY of you to do ANY of this shit! I mean okay, I'm also reviews editor at The Escapist, but if you blacklist me there, the worst you're gonna do is annoy me for a minute. I'm not afraid of any of you fuckers! And that's what really makes people like you afraid. 'Cause the new generation of game coverage... isn't scared of ya. So fuck off, and thank God for me!"
  • After signing the show on with The Escapist, what was Jim's first order of business on The Jimquisition? Singing praises for the oft-maligned Dynasty Warriors series, a long-time personal favorite of theirs!
  • In "Free To Wait", Jim goes on a tirade against Dungeon Keeper Mobile and other Free To Play "games" such as Simpsons Tapped Out that offer no gameplay to the player, while demanding their money in order to actually play them.
    ''I have nothing but scorn and disgust for any company that does something like this. These “games” are the work of fucking hacks! Pure and simple: shiftless, lazy hacks! There are so many examples of good Free To Play games out there that ANYBODY resorting to this: the lowest of hanging fruit, the contrived and unimaginative tactic of just forcing players to wait for no justifiable reason, is acting like the most pitiful and talentless fucks! And if that offends anybody working on these games, I don’t know why, I mean, you traded your dignity in to make shit like this, I’m surprised you’ve any self respect left to GIVE a shit! And also, FUCK YOU for joining the gold rush, regressively exploiting a bubble before it bursts, for contributing more damage to a CLEARLY unhealthy market and for adding another tumor to the cancer that’s eating away at entertainment and killing the credibility of a business model that once showed great promise! Fuck you, you bone idle fucking locusts! *mic drop*
  • Tackling the subject of Anita Sarkeesian not by coming down on one side or the other about her, but by telling those who were overtly misogynist about her before she'd even put a single video up that it's entirely their fault that anyone who criticizes the woman, no matter how well-reasoned their argument, is labeled a misogynist.
  • The ending of "Corrupt, Censoring, Suicidal Indie Devs" Deserves a mention for pointing out why trying to censor criticism never works out and why messing with internet celebrities with large fanbases will only lead to trouble.
    "You can delete the comments as much as you want, but it's too fucking late. Maybe you thought (because my Youtube channel is relatively new and still rather small) you'd get away with it where those who tackled the titan of TB failed. Unfortunately, it would appear you may not have realized who you fucked with, and you may have underestimated the gaming community's distaste for censorship. Oh dear Kobra, you done fucked up. [Beat] And I am going to crush you. [...] Censoring criticism, running to mummy and yelling 'No fair' not only makes you a corrupting individual, perhaps worse than any EA or Activision, it exposes you as a fool with an aptitude for career suicide and serves to only benefit the critic, who you bet will milk for all it's worth (see this episode) and will ensure you'll be known only for your bratty behaviour and awful, awful lack of game making talent! Ultimately we who value free criticism will win. You, who would hide as cowards behind Youtube's exploitable and poorly managed litigation system will lose. You will lose every fucking time, one way or another".
  • The entirety of the video The Slaughtering Grounds: A Steam Meltdown Story. It is essentially a lesson in "How to NOT beat the Streisand Effect" and "The Importance of Hiring Competent Creative Staff." Jim even posted a follow-up video two weeks later about how the development team at first threatened legal action, and when Jim was prepared to go to court over it, they responded that "it wasn't worth their time." It shows just how childish their reactions were, and why trying to censor criticism doesn't work.
  • "The Reviewbisoft Problem" has Jim calling out Ubisoft and SEGA for their post-release date review embargoes of Assassin's Creed: Unity and Sonic Boom. What makes this so awesome is that Jim demonstrates, just with pure logic and simple economics, why this practice is so harmful. Besides showing that a company has little faith in its own product, the post-release review date ultimately hurts a company in the long run because of all of the bad press and negative attention.
  • In "Regarding My Inquisitor And Vaginas", they wallop the backlash Dragon Age: Inquisition gets for daring to have a significant portion of LGBTQ romance options...by making a criticism in that same line of all the hetero ones, while invoking the particularly dumb view of gamers being entirely cisgender hetero men (since they "cannot imagine being a [heterosexual] lover of Iron Bull"). No homophobe's dignity is left without pounding. And pounding. And pounding.
  • After a health scare involving an allergic reaction that put them into shock, they begin "Bloodborne is Where Survival Horror Lives On." by playing "I'm Alive".
  • This withering "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Digpex Games at the end of "Skate Man Intense Rescue: A Steam Spite Story":
    So! Weird situation. In fact I'm not entirely unconvinced that the game wasn't set up hastily as some sort of bait to initiate this exact, uh, situation. To what end, I don't know, I mean, you've inconvenienced me a bit, well done, I'm sure your parents are proud, but, you know, life moves on, and I'm perfectly fine, and you are now rendered a joke, so, well done you. I do have one thing to say, though, to Digpex Games and, indeed, any other developer who thinks that this is the correct course of action. Okay, now, let me clue you in. You say I am no king. And that's true. I am but a human, you are but humans, we're born, we live, and we will die one day. But here's the difference between you and I. When people think of Jim Sterling, they think of Jim Sterling. When people think of your shitty two-bit games... they think of Jim Sterling. You see, whatever meager misery of a legacy you could have hoped to attain... it has now been rendered unto me. You belong to ME now. You are but a trinket, but an ornament to go on the shelf next to Kobra Studio, next to the Slaughtering Grounds guys, YOU. ARE. MINE. So I hope you enjoy that, because I am Jim Fucking Sterling Son, you can't stop me, and if you have a problem with that, you are cordially invited to Eat. My. Pussy. Thank God... for me. Thank God for me.
  • Jim tears Kobra Studios a new one in their game Second Warfare. They danced with Kobra Studios before and were very happy to point out how awful their newest early access game was; full of bugs, horrible pop in for objects and scenery, a turret that was basically a floating gun encased in sandbags, and a mess of other issues. Kobra studios fired back on their Steam forums, claiming that Jim was a cheater and purposely played the game bad on purpose (this was due to Jim not seeing what the controls were in the tips). What does Jim do? Play the game a second time and tries to appease to the devs by playing the game the way they wanted them to, which somehow made the game even worse as Jim showed off how awful the flashlight was and how the frame rate tanked even harder than the first attempt!
    • It should be noted that the tips in question didn't exist at the time. Just look at the first video compared to the second video, and it seems clear that Kobra Studios added the tips after the fact in a patch.
  • Jim dealing with all of Konami's crap over the years, trying their best to get Silent Hill the publicity it deserves (to the point of having to SNEAK IN to a game convention and then getting blacklisted for TRYING TO HELP KONAMI... a move that sadly, didn't affect them at all) and making several videos calling them out on their stupid practices. This culminates in a video where they reveal that they have informants within the company that tell horror stories of the sheer stupidity of its practices, like taking two weeks just to GET A COMPUTER for new employees.
    Say it with me now: Fffffffffuck. KoNAMI.
    • Not to mention their absolutely brilliant performance of AM's hate speech, quite possibly the best reading of it that has ever been done.
  • Their "interview" with Digital Homicide, in which the developers try to trick them with numerous logical fallacies and to outrage them, only for them to remain calm and not back down while trying to give them constructive criticism. To top it off, Digital Homicide called Jim months later by passive aggressively threatening them with a lawsuit and claimed they wouldn't sue if Jim met with their lawyer and signed a document promising to never mention them or slander their name ever again. When Jim said they needed to talk to their own lawyer about the situation so nothing was missed, Digital Homicide quickly became agitated and aggressive in response and hung up.
  • Jim's trilogy of videos where they rail against online passes and fiercely attack and completely demolish the notion that used games are somehow damaging to the industry.
  • Jim eventually revealed why they took so long to review Temper Tantrum 2; Digital Homicide repeatedly blamed their Caustic Critic nature for making their games flop. This time, despite fans constantly nagging them to review it, they waited a few weeks before eventually mentioning that they had done precisely nothing, and that the game was getting bad reviews thanks to DH being incredibly lazy and not putting any effort in, utterly disproving their claim that Jim was bad for their business.
  • For their 2015 Halloween episode, Jim manages to get Cliff Bleszinski to make a surprise appearance on the show. And it. is. GLORIOUS!
  • During Episode 52 of the Podquisition, to celebrate the anniversary of Jim going independent, the 90's Australian kids show Round the Twist comes up in discussion. Both Jim and Laura mention the show's theme tune will be stuck in their heads for the rest of the episode...so Gavin busts out his guitar, mid-episode, and plays an impromptu acoustic cover of the theme tune. Jim and Laura - and any audience members who remember that excellent show - are suitably impressed.
  • On a related note to the Dragon Age parody above, they eviscerate the people trying to use the Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball 3 controversy to signal-boost by pretending to be one for a while...and showing precisely how cynical the whole manipulation-and-then-blame-on-SJWs business is.
  • The episode The YouTube Fair Use Protection Program has Jim giving some well deserved praise for YouTube finally cracking down on falsified copyright claims. They show off a screenshot of YouTube notifying them about someone filing a copyright claim on one of their videos, but YouTube would take no action against it because the video falls under fair use. To top it off, Jim's video would be used as an example to show people what is fair use and how such a video is not valid for copyright claims. Jim takes the opportunity to act smug against the shady and crappy indie developers who had given them so much trouble in the past.
  • In the episode Crunch, Jim (showing a surprising amount of anger) completely rips apart Alex St. John for his backwards attitude towards game developers (which is basically him mocking them for having a "wage-slave" attitude and that developing games was "art", not work, and that game developers should be honored to work 80 hours a week) and completely dismantles all of his arguments about why crunch-time is a good thing.
    There are companies like THQ and Chaos that promoted crunch and ran themselves out of business 'cuz that shit! Don't! Work! I'm going to go out on a fucking limb here and make this wacky suggestion to end with, OK? Maybe. Just MAAAAAAYBE you don't get the best results from a bunch of tired, worn-out, stressed-out men and women. Maybe just think about that absolutely zany idea for a minute! It's god damn 2016! Stop having this fucking conversation as if it's relevant! Because crunch is not fucking relevant! It should have never have been relevant in this industry and people who still propagate it are god damn disconnected, alienated, out-of-touch dinosaurs! Thank. God. For me. *knock knock*
  • Near the end of the episode Newtendo, Jim discusses why in a Nintendo centric episode there was footage from Grand Theft Auto V, Metal Gear Solid V and Beyond: Two Souls in it. They figured that since any footage they show from Nintendo gets inevitably ContentID'd forcing Ads to run on the video they'd just stick in a bunch of other material that always got ID'd and let the corporations fight over who has the "rights," to monetize it. However, what happened is that with a multitude of conflicting claims no one could successfully monetize the video, basically Jim beat YouTube's ContentID system by putting more copyrighted material into the video.
    In my experience, I've realised that it stops one company from monetising it, because where's the money gonna go to? Is it gonna be Nintendo... or the company that owns the rights to Erasure's "Chains of Love" because that's another thing we're going to do every time we talk about Nintendo. *dances to the aforementioned for the rest of the video*
    • They expand on this in their next video, calling this strategy a "copyright deadlock," and pointing out how it makes a complete mockery of Internet copyright law, as the only way to avoid copyright strikes is to rip off as many people as you can. "I'll get my comeuppance one of these days, but not today!"
    • And then in this video, they create a copyright deadlock by using footage from Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Japan in the same video, causing both subsidiaries to claim against each other, making the system even more of a farce.
  • Jim Sterling will take every chance they can get to slag off Konami for every bad and stupid thing they do ever since their downfall in the 2010's. At the end of the "Jimquisition: Doom Guy" episode, Sterling makes a Fuck Konami news report showing a fan of theirs, who was in Japan for a while, standing in front of Konami's headquarters holding up a sign saying "FUC" while standing next to the company logo so that it said "FucKonami". Jim gave the man major kudos for spreading the word. The end of the "Genitalia" episode has Jim revealing that another fan of theirs pulled the same stunt, but this time the fan wore a shirt sold by Jim's online store that says FucKonami and it gave the man some confused looks by the employees walking in.
  • Jim's absolutely BRUTAL Take That! to the overly aggressive fans of No Man's Sky (who DDOSed Jim's website over their not-so-positive review of the game) in the video Sky Hype.
  • The FucKonami news entry on The Multiplayer-Only Problem is easily one of the most vicious out of all of those segments, ending with a looping clip of Konami being booed, while their worst transgressions and random "FUCK KONAMI"s flash on screen, all with Megalovania blaring in the background.
  • Jim's November 28, 2016 video (Nintendo - A Shit Distributor And Fuckheaded Toymaker) is an epic calling out of Nintendo for driving demand for the NES Classic through artificial scarcity that deserves to be seen in its entirety. But the best part is when Jim calls them out for adding more stress to the lives of retail workers at an already stressful time:
    "It's the poor fuckers in the trenches I feel for the most. The disappointed customers? Yeah, that sucks for them. But the poor fuckers on the other side of the counter dealing with those customers who take it really badly? They deserve goddamn medals! To pull from my local Target again, the folks working there spent the rest of the NES Classic's launch day fielding complaints and outrage from the general public, who couldn't understand why the thing advertised as available that day wasn't available that day. I speak from experience - and I'm sure I speak for many people - when I say anyone who's worked a customer-serving job can tell you how abusive, nasty and cruel angry customers can get, and those retail workers just have to stand there and take it in torrents and waves far over and above what they could have been getting, just so Nintendo can artificially magnify desire for its product and revel in all the media stories about how quickly its awesome product sold out! It is, of course, Nintendo's right to do this, but honestly Nintendo...ffffffuck you for throwing retail workers under the bus for your own cynical avarice! Don't they have enough to deal with this time of year?! Black Friday? Christmas? Goddamn fucking Hatchimals?! And on top of that, you're there to stick the boot in and grind a little extra shit into their crotches! Thanks for that, you duplicitous second-hand cockrings!"
  • For all of 2016, Jim had to deal with James Romine of the infamous Digital Homicide studio flinging a Frivolous Lawsuit at them, all because Romine felt insulted that Jim tore his games apart as a critic. Romine and DigiHom accused Jim of slander, causing a loss of profit to their studio, mental anguish, and other nonsense. After they tried to go after a bunch of random Steam users for their critical reviews (along with trying to sue Valve when they refused to hand over personal information of said users), they got banned from Steam by Valve for their efforts, Digital Homicide backed off for a while, but continued the lawsuit against Jim by trying to appeal to the judge by amending their lawsuit. Jim gave a brief post on their website on the situation and ended it on this note:
    Jim Sterling: When this is all over, I’ll consider reimbursing you the $1.00 a month you claim to give me on Patreon in order to “prove” I do business in Arizona.
    • As of February 2017, the case was officially dismissed with prejudice, meaning Romine can't sue Sterling for it ever again.
    • In this near 40-minute (hopefully) epilogue video, Jim lays out the saga that is the Romines' lawsuit against them, most of which they summarized as they and their friends/lawyers/allies going "I don't know what he is doing."
    • But the best part of the video has Jim taking a slight tangent, in comparing what they and the Romines had achieved outside of the lawsuit, since the Romines accused Jim of being a leech, while claiming that they were contributing members of the gaming community.
    • Jim goes off on a brief tangent afterwards to talk to James Romine directly in a brief but beautiful "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
      Jim Sterling: Tell me, James, at what point do you decide to take any responsibility for your problems? At what point do you look at the one common thread in all of your setbacks — you — and at least get curious about your involvement in your own downfall? I don't know if you'll ever find the self-reflection you sorely need.
    • What makes the above tangent even more pointed is that while Digital Homicide were busy shooting themselves in the foot, Jim themself — the person Digital Homicide were blaming for destroying their business through harassment and slander — didn't publicly say anything about or toward Digital Homicide or its operators throughout this entire period.
    • At one point, James Romine accuses Jim of being a 'direct competitor' because Jim does voice acting for games they don't make and don't profit from, to which Jim replies:
      Jim Sterling: James Romine, don't flatter yourself. I will never consider you a direct competitor to me. Ever. In any medium.
    • How the case was brought to dismissal: Jim's lawyer simply talked to James Romine and explained exactly what would happen if the case were to proceed to court. Apparently this induced enough Oh, Crap! in Romine to make him agree to drop the case with a clause meaning it couldn't be filed again and that he should strongly consider fair use before trying to copyright strike any of Jim's videos again.
    • And finally, serving as the capper to the event that started off the video, and indeed the whole ill-conceived rivalry in the first place:
      So James, I've got to ask: Is it fair to call The Slaughtering Grounds an absolute failure now?? *cue 'Maximum Sass' clip*
    • At the first the video seems to end on somewhat of a downer with a threat from someone claiming to be a steam developer threatening that they and other developers will throw several more lawsuits towards Jim's way in an effort to waste their time/actually kill them from the stress. But then Jim stomps that threat down with one of their own:
      And if anybody- if any fucking idiot- thinks they can repeat what James did, and somehow succeed, well you're welcome to try. Because I won't show mercy next time. And you will break... yourselves... upon me.
    • Despite all the trouble they put them through, Jim let Digital Homicide off very lightly, letting the suit be dismissed with prejudice and not even going after them to pay for all the legal fees they'd racked up dealing with their garbage. They could have taken them to the cleaners, but they were both gracious enough and, to be honest, dead bloody tired enough of the whole affair and just wanted to put it all behind them (their lawyers and advisers also repeatedly talked them down from more extreme measures). But they warn that the next time some assclown levels a blatantly malicious and frivolous lawsuit against them for the express purpose of harassing them, they're going to, ahem, 'Become the consequences'.
    • There is also something profound and satisfying when Jim says that DigiHom is now like a wounded ant in their hand, and the effort required to crush their longtime nemesis outweighs the satisfaction they'd receive. As Jim puts it simply: "Not worth it."
  • The somewhat controversial video "Why It's Morally OK to Pirate Nintendo's Games" where Jim ruthlessly attacks Nintendo for being massive hypocrites when it comes to their attitudes towards copyright law (I.E. only enforcing the parts that are beneficial to them and ignoring the parts that are not) and says that because of Nintendo's blatant disrespect for the law (as well as Nintendo's lackluster lineup of it's older games on the Virtual console) that consumers in no way should feel obligated to respect Nintendo and as such are very much justified in not rewarding Nintendo with any money by paying for their games.
    • Four years later, they made a spiritual follow-up called "Why It's Morally OK to Pirate Sony's Games", in response to Sony's lack of respect and regard for their older games by shutting down the PSN on the the PSP/PS3/PSVita and sending hundreds of games into digital oblivion, making them unobtainable unless if bought second-hand or pirated. They also put Jim Ryan, the CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, on blast for questioning why anyone would want to play older games that aren't as graphically impressive as modern-day games. And not only that, but they also call out Sony for failing to tell indie developers still making games for the Vita that the storefronts were being shut down in less than three months, which would cause them to either cancel Vita versions or crunch to release them.
  • After releasing their 38-minute epic on Digital Homicide, during which they were quite visibly drained, Jim followed up with a second Jimquisition that week titled "Fur Fucked", where they chewed out fellow YouTuber 'Dalas' for his shoddy behavior, malicious development practices, crappy gameplay and abuse of the DMCA takedowns. The last point, in particular, was a sore point for Jim, who chewed out Dalas, a fellow content creator, for abusing a practice that could so easily be used against him to destroy his livelihood.
    • One of the best parts of the video, however, is that Jim quite openly calls Dalas a coward, mentioning that their own highly critical video on Fur Fun was not only left alone, but Dalas in fact offered them a key to the multiplayer, not daring to touch Jim. In contrast, smaller content creators such as SidAlpha were hit by DMCA takedowns, since they had no means to fight back.
  • After teasing about it on their website when the issue came to light, the episode "Exposure" has Jim calling out the owner of Brash Games, Paul Ryan (not that one), for treating its reviewers like trash by showing everyone how the writers never got compensated for their work (Ryan believes reviewers just need "exposure" and nothing else), gotten zero feedback, had their review scores changed if Paul didn't like it, and then having their name on their reviews being scrubbed out once they quit. What makes it better is the Streisand Effect going into high gear as Jim shows how Paul desperately tries to cover his tracks by making the reviews credited to an alternate name of his, then changing said name once he was caught while also trying to delist the website from the Wayback Machine so that no one could look up old archives of the site to see the original writers. This blew up in his face spectacularly when Jim points out that not only did they grab screenshots of the original authors on Brash Games, so did Open Critic since they always archive reviews. To further sweeten things, Jim proudly says that they commissioned the writer who exposed Paul's shenanigans to write an article of what went down since they feel that people should be compensated for their work and they would be glad to pay the man to write for them again in the future.
  • Jim has and always will keep their show ad-free and sponsor-free, funding it all through their Patreon. In their video following the Brash Games fiasco they talk about how they've been approached by companies representing gambling websites in order for Jim to sponsor them in an article, and how basically they really don't care what the content is as long as the link to their websites are inserted and enough traffic is generated for them to benefit from it. Jim admits they considered accepting the sponsorship, taking the money, and making the 'sponsored content' nothing but telling them off and cutting into them, but ultimately they couldn't bring themself to do it. Not even for a joke are they willing to put their artistic integrity in jeopardy.
    Jim Sterling: I simply couldn't make myself do it. Not least for the fact that the deal was worth (and this is probably the saddest part of the whole thing) 100 dollars. For the price of a fucking Steam Greenlight submission I could sell out my dignity and cash in the respect of my audience; and even for a joke I couldn't do that.
    • Staying true to their word, Jim abandoned the Disqus comment system on their web site after the people behind it started to put in advertisements in the comment sections and offering people a paid premium to get rid of the ads. Jim notes that they wouldn't have minded the extra cost if Disqus simply had been honest from the get go instead of springing the sudden change on everyone without any notice. They found a new service that offered the same thing Disqus had, but being more upfront about their services and plans.
  • And continuing the Brash Games saga, Jim responds to Paul Ryan's (not that one) explanation for why he hasn't paid any of his writers: the man claims that the whistleblowers were suffering from mental health problems and thus didn't meet deadlines.
    Jim Sterling: I can't...I can't quite express the depths of my disgust with what Ryan did here. It's not that mental health issues are to be ashamed of—hi, I'm Jim Sterling and I need pills to make my brain function normally sometimes—but it's only ever the right and the choice of the person with the mental health issue to publicize it. Not only is it unethical, unfair, un-fucking-conscionable, in the UK where Brash is based, it's also not bloody legal. You don't get to disclose anybody's health anything, you fucking. Rat. Fuck.
    • A bit after that, Jim moves on to Ryan's Wounded Gazelle Gambit where he tries to garner sympathy because he's in a wheelchair. After pointing out that they had no idea that Ryan was handicapped, so it could never have factored into their coverage of Brash Games before then, Jim quickly and brutally shoots Ryan down with this:
      Jim Sterling: Of course, now that I know Paul Ryan (not that one) uses a wheelchair, I need to talk about how I've adjusted my attitude towards him. [Beat] My attitude has not fucking changed.
  • After being in the hospital with gallbladder disease, Jim's back, without even having missed a Monday update.
  • Jim's scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech directed at Randy Pitchford as retaliation for slandering them during an interview at the end of "How to Not F2P Like a Total Wanker."
    • Game Over, Randy! is essentially a "The Reason You Suck" Speech directed to Randy Pitchford, his company Gearbox, and Sega in full video form, as Jim progressively gets angrier and angrier with Randy's lies about "the demo being only a vertical slice of the full game", painting Gearbox as a noble hero, boasting over its Karma Houdini Warranty and painting themselves as the victim, and Sega's pure stupidity and sheer insistence on continuing with the false advertising for the game, all over the debacle regarding Aliens: Colonial Marines's poor quality.
      Jim: What I want is simple. Just fucking acknowledge your goddamn horseshit, guys! Stop showing off that you got away with it, stop pretending like you're the victim! Show some fucking accountability and responsibility for the way you acted! I fully agree Sega deserves a lot of the blame too, incompetent as they were, fucking ridiculously incompetent, but they weren't the ones taking personal responsibility and making personal assurances regarding the game's quality! That was all YOU, Mr. Pitchford! I sat not three feet away from you, Randy, while you told me how great your game looked! How big of an Aliens fan you are, how much "passion" you've got for your outsourced game! A game you said in videos that Gearbox was developing, only for us to find out on launch day that it...really wasn't all that fucking true. No mention of TimeGate until the pre-orderers had the thing in their hands, and none of us need a lawsuit to get what we really need. All we need...is some fucking admittance!
  • In Jim's rant against YouTube screwing over smaller channels, they call them out over how it's nearly impossible for content creators to make any money from ad revenue and are given the cold shoulder if their videos are demonitized, but will gladly bend over backwards for large corporations. Jim also launches a massively scathing Take That! towards people who claim that content creators on YouTube need to "get a real job" and how they shouldn't have put their livelihoods online if they knew they'd be screwed over. In a nutshell, they tell the naysayers to piss off and shut up since everyone relies on someone or something else to make money.
  • Sterdust. Just Sterdust. No words can do them justice.
    • Even better: what started as another character Jim created along with Jimsaw and the Steam Cleaner is making their way into a real wrestling ring after being issued a challenge by Pro Wrestling Ego.
    • And then the match itself, which is both amazingly awesome and hilarious at the same time, featuring Sterdust acting like a Dirty Coward, and doing an incredible body slam to Orion. Best of all is the ending: Orion Taylor throws a chair into the ring with Sterdust, only for Sterdust to grab the chair first, smack it on the mat, then toss the chair to a bewildered Taylor and throw himself to the mat, wailing like a baby (incidentally the favourite trick of legendary wrestler Eddie Guerrero). The ref disqualifies Taylor for the "illegal shot" he didn't see but which must have happened, and Sterdust and Ursa Major are the winners! Sterdust is (technically) undefeated in the ring!
    • In one episode intro, Jim shows the Pro Wrestling Ego Tag Team Championship belt that they won as Sterdust. They even give a Take That! to wrestling YouTube channels by saying that they won "an actual wrestling title, not one that I just made up myself."
  • Every single time Jim busts out the Commentocracy. Never before has there been a fancier way of saying, "This is how you elitist pricks actually sound".
  • Any video Jim does that takes aim at Microtransactions.
    • Culminating in "It's Just Cosmetic", where Jim take the excuse that lootboxes are okay if their rewards are "just cosmetic" and tears it to ribbons.
  • A special mention has to go to "Anger", a video done in response to the numerous controversies over the past months and the constant argument that "Games are too expensive to make" (including as a counterpoint to a video made by Extra Credits where they defended some of the industries more egregious practices), in which they proceed to utterly demolish the argument to rubble and exposing it for the fallacy that it is.
  • One for the fans: Jim ended up receiving over 600 entries for the "Horrid Spider" contest, which ranged from drawings (which weren't eligible for the contest, but were too awesome for Jim to not include), to sculptures, to completely new models, to an entire font, to a short playable game made out of the asset's parts.
  • Jim, as a new Warframe player, decided to make a video calling them out for their prime access plans essentially forcing people to spend money on things they didn't need for new cosmetic items. Digital Extremes responded within days of the video by immediately announcing cosmetics packs and asking players what they wanted.
  • Jim pointing out how ironic it is that Nintendo would try to discourage people from theft via emulation, yet content ID videos that are under fair use and steal the money that Youtubers are making.
  • In Pity Poor Waluigi, Jim's ending segment has them shut down those on Twitter who harassed Masahiro Sakurai for having Waluigi remain as an Assist Trophy in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, rather than being Promoted to Playable.
    Jim: Harassing someone to get someone to do something that you want, is pretty much the fastest way you can guarantee they won't do what you want.
  • Jim's unbelievably sick burn to 2K games after calling them out on intentionally making their games boring to incentivize paying to not have to play them.
    Jim: No, 2K Games, virtual currency isn't an unfortunate reality of video games. You are an unfortunate reality of video games.
  • Their rage at Telltale Games laying off most of their staff turned into a full video exposing the poor conditions video game employees are often forced to work under, tearing apart every excuse for mistreating workers and saying that if you can't take care of your employees then you shouldn't be in business.
  • The JQ Demolishing The Excuses made for AAA Publishers Exploitative Greed is pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Jim doing an epic 20 minute rant against AAA publishers exploitative business practice and effortlessly dismantling every single excuse people use to defend them.
  • In The GAAAmbling Problem, their ultimate takedown of lootboxes in the AAA gaming industry and the weak defences corporate mouthpieces use to excuse them, Jim unleashed possibly their most vicious and withering tirade ever in response to an Ubisoft rep's argument that "If people didn't buy [loot boxes], they wouldn't be added to future games", presented in the form of a Star Wars-esque Opening Scroll:
    FUCK YOU
    Fuck you, you predatory, exploitative, callous, audacious fucking scavengers.
    You duplicitous shovelers of digital filth, you can fuck right the fuck off with the insincere slime that dribbles from your decaying mouths whenever you try to validate the harmful business practices and your decision to steadily erode the value of your games while asking for ever more money.
    • Even better is while they may be focusing on Ubisoft just the matter of these practices being addressed also brings the hammer down on everything from EA's business practices to 2K's begging of children to pressure the government to allow underage gambling.
  • One scathing critique of gamers having violent meltdowns over women in gaming demonstrates how little patience Jim has for incels. As the Duke, they promptly mock several incel comments about female gamers, revealing how shallow and pathetic several of them are. Take a look here.
  • Jim had continued working with Pro Wrestling Ego after their initial debut, culminating in them showing up for "How Publishers Exploit Your Confusion And Your FOMO" holding the actual Pro Wrestling Ego tag team titles after their "Constellation" won them! As they pointed out, they're the first Youtuber (not counting actual wrestlers who have YouTube channels) to actually hold real pro wrestling gold that they didn't buy or make themselves (taking shots at the likes of What Culture Wrestling and Cultaholic).
  • In Shadow of More Dollars, Jim's devastating "The Reason You Suck" Speech toward whoever the Corrupt Corporate Executive that implanted microtransactions onto Middle-earth: Shadow of War, complete with the new Theme Music Power-Up:
    Jim: And as a final note, to whomever it may concern... this show sometimes gets passed around the industry as high as corporate top-brass, so there's always a slight chance that the person or persons who made this call for Shadow for Warbucks, will see this. And I'd just like to personally let you know, from the bottom of my heart, that you are scum. You disgust me for perpetuating an exploitative and destructive cancer on the video game industry. For taking advantage of your customers and the quality work your developers do. You're a real piece of human shit, you know that? And I hope someone finds a way to ruin something you enjoy doing. Probably like, cocaine snorted off a dog's cock. Or whatever it is you fucking executive shit-squirts are into.
  • "A Difficult Subject" has Jim reiterate a point they made back in 2013 and 2016: if Dark Souls had an easy mode, they wouldn't care in the slightest, because they wouldn't use it. Jim not only defends their own position, but also attacks anyone who engages in Easy-Mode Mockery, tearing apart arguments about how easy modes are automatically bad and how helping people who would otherwise struggle means a game sells more. This even includes using mods to make the game easier. Jim's point is that gamers should not act like "Stop Having Fun" Guys since it's really no one's business but your own as to how you play a video game. Not only that, but they even bring out Duke Amiel and does their own reading of the "You Cheated Not Only the Game, But Yourself" copypasta!
  • "The Addictive Cost Of Predatory Videogame Monetization" is Jim at their most sincere in their utter disdain for microtransactions and loot boxes. There's not much humor to speak of; just Tranquil Fury about how utterly despicable they find AAA publishers who ruthlessly engage in them.
    Jim: There was a comment on Reddit once that said "Jim Sterling is not pro-consumer, he's anti-AAA". And I'll take that. That sounds fine by me. I do hate what the mainstream industry has done to the medium. How the unchecked, unimpeded greed that fuels corporate decision-making has turned games into grindy, unsatisfying money vacuums, all in the name of psychological ambush. I say this not with affected Internet outrage, but with a genuine, understated, ice cold fury: I genuinely hate most video game publishers, their executives, and every seedy, slimy, corrupt thing they've done to both the industry at large, and more importantly, their many victims. You're damn right I'm anti-AAA.
  • In "G2A Isn't Just Worse Than Piracy... It's Also Very Stupid And Embarrassing" Jim reveals that their wrestling persona Sterdust has gone heel and become The Star Eater, the Super-Heavyweight Super-Villain. The ham goes through the roof while the Star Eater is introduced via a comic-book cover and getting both the opening and losing monologues.
  • "EA Should Lose The Star Wars License" is pretty much a long, scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech toward Electronic Arts and its handling of the Star Wars license with its Star Wars: Battlefront duology, but it's only toward the end where Jim explodes on the company in general with its corrupt practices and constant destruction of subordinate companies.
    Jim: Just how? How? How do you fuck up Star Wars this badly? It's a perfect example of how screwy and inane the so-called AAA industry is. We're talking about Star Wars, arguably the most versatile license there is. With so much potential, EA should have been swimming in game ideas and releases that offered all manner of experiences! The sheer incompetence on display here is matched only by that time Ubisoft managed to take something as simple as Tetris, and make a mess of that! How do you fuck up Star Wars?! How do you manage it this consistently?! You should at least have had one good game out by now, at least one! How have you managed this, EA—how have you actually! Managed! This?!! This is an accomplishment in FUCKING STUPID! I mean, EA has BioWare under its employ for God's shitting sake! The KOTOR people! But is BioWare making a new Knights of the Old Republic?! Let me check! (random keyboard mashing) Oh, no, no, they're not, right now they're making Anthem! A Destiny-looking "live service", that so far has failed to spark much customer interest, and may be the first step on the path to Unicronic Arts' eventual trademark studio closure if it fails! Because that's what EA does, it will chew you up and spit you out if you go anywhere near its gaping decayed mouth! In fact, with it fumbling Star Wars as badly as this, shutting down studios and laying off employees may be all the company's actually fucking good at! Now I hope Anthem doesn't fail and lead to BioWare's closure, but at the same time I can hardly say I give a shit about Anthem as a game, thanks in no small part to EA's behavior over the past few years giving me no confidence that it won't be a con job. Electronic Arts' run with Star Wars has been a disaster. A conga line of humiliating farces and a sour dribble of mediocre releases surrounded by cancellations and closures. Disney would be correct to seize its property back from this gibbering cretin of a company. It bloody well should! For dragging the Star Wars name through the mud, for wasting so much time and money, for having so little to show for any of this rancid garbage, EA should just. Fucking. Stop. Preferably forever!
    (ad of the Jimporium shop plays to cap off the episode)
  • Jim has finally broken out into song. And it is glorious.
    Jim: ♪Hey, did you hear about♪
    ♪Cyberpunk?♪
    ♪The game of the year, except♪
    ♪the versions that are total junk♪
    ♪The publisher said the game was running well♪
    ♪But neglected to mention♪
    ♪the years of development hell♪
    ♪Reviewers said this game we'd all adore♪
    ♪But nobody knew about the Xbox One and PS4♪
    ♪You see, it turns out gaming's biggest sensation♪
    ♪Was a fucking load of shit on the systems from last generation♪
    ♪And if that controversy ain't enough to appease ya♪
    ♪Just wait until you hear about the fucking seizures♪
  • Jim calling out those who participated in and support the terrorist insurrection of the United States Capitol to disrupt the electoral vote count and calling them out for trying to steal democracy while co-opting the term ‘patriot’.
  • Jim taking on Gilson B. Pontes, as outlined in "I Can't Believe A Developer Tried To Kill My Channel". An independent PlayStation game developer, notorious for stealing assets for their own low-quality games, attempted to take down Jim's channel by issuing several copyright strikes over a period of days, rather than all at once. YouTube did nothing at first, only suggesting Jim file counterclaims against Pontes, and warned them they may have to defend their videos in a court of law. Jim sent an email to Pontes and YouTube warning both that not only were they ready to defend the videos in court, but if the videos weren't back up by the end of the day, both Pontes and YouTube would be hearing from Jim's lawyer, the latter for enabling the former's bullshit. YouTube saw sense, and all four videos were restored.
  • Jim stops their 2021 E3 episode midway to go full blast against the games journalism industry for completely moving on from Ubisoft's disgustingly horrific 2020 sexual abuse scandal, furiously railing against the fact that nearly every outlet has completely moved on and continues to shill for Ubisoft's games despite the fact that, despite the company's lip service, nothing has truly changed and hundreds of their employees are still at risk from actual, literal sexual predators.
  • "I Made Steam's Most Unlikable Developer Really Really Mad" is a follow-up video to "The Misadventures Of Steam's Most Unlikeable Developer", in which Jim details how the developer of Domina, one Nicholas John Leonhard Gorissen, used his patch notes to insert Author Filibusters about alt-right topics, most of which were sexist, homophobic, and transphobic. In the follow-up video, Jim details how Gorissen spent all of the following day after the video went live yelling at people on Twitter, constantly trying to undermine Jim's character, and making increasingly desperate attempts for them to talk to him. Gorrisen was inevitably suspended from Twitter as a result, and over the next few days, Gorrisen would release even more increasingly unhinged and incoherent rants in patch notes, get banned from his own game's Steam Community, and ultimately get the game yanked from the Steam Store with his behavior, the latter of which is quite the accomplishment given that Steam has a notoriously "hands-off" policy when it comes to dealing with creators. What makes it so amazing is that, the entire time this was happening, Jim never responded to anything Gorrisen said or did, not with so much as a retweet. In short, Jim made Gorrisen into an Unknown Rival very quickly, and let his own ranting and raving against anyone who wronged him seal his own fate, all while they just sat back and watched.
    JSS: Not once did I quote tweet him, not once did I reply to him. [...] I wish I could take the credit for knocking a fascy little 'phobe off Twitter, but he did it to himself.
  • "The Last Of Us Part I Has The Worst Graphics Of All Time" is Jim taking another axe to people who make nitpicky complaints about graphics, using The Last of Us: Part I as an example. They use such minor nitpicks as leaves not moving in water, mistaking a giraffe for a horse, and a single clipped texture to "prove" that The Last of Us "looks like shit" and isn't worth the money. After about ten minutes of this, Jim finally gives up the ghost and admits that they were in Sarcasm Mode the whole time. However, Jim notes that some examples they found of genuine attitudes like these were even more ludicrous, such as "Puddlegate" from Spider-Man (PS4) where some people complained that puddles were missing from later gameplay trailers after being featured in the first one. All in all, Jim takes these people to task for finding things to complain about, intentionally trying to make something out of nothing as a result, never coming to terms with the fact that the public at large reacts with apathy.
    JSS: I've talked many times about how this is an industry that pushed graphics so hard — that made such a big deal over visuals more than anything else when it came to pushing hardware, when it came to telling us why game systems were better than the competition, when it came to hyping up new game releases — to the point that studios would lie, would doctor screenshots, would run gameplay footage on hardware that was superior to the hardware it was being sold on. It's small wonder that we have now this breed of nerd that is so obsessed with visual effects, and graphical power, that they are freeze framing movies, to point at it and say "Look how shit this looks", while everyone else just shrugs, and wonders what the goddamn problem is.
  • "You Didn't Finish The Game" is Steph taking fanboys of The Legend of Zelda to task yet again. They gave The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom a 7/10, just as they had done for Breath of the Wild. Rabid Zelda fanboys promptly accused Jim of not finishing the game, and claiming that their opinion was therefore invalid. Jim tears into this line of thinking, saying that one does not need to finish a game to know if they like it or not; instead, a person should only play as much of a game as they feel they need to in order to form a solid opinion. Jim also points out the Fridge Logic on display: if every reviewer was forced to play every game they reviewed to completion, it would be more likely to make review scores go down, not up. Jim compares this to the time that their stepfather forced them to eat liver and onions before they were allowed to leave the dinner table, which caused Jim to despise liver and onions and refuse to eat it ever again. Finally, Jim points out that, deep down, the only thing these hardcore Zelda fanboys care about — and by extension, the only thing any fanboy who attacks a reviewer for a supposedly "low" score cares about — is reading a review that validates their opinion. Jim notes that they will never reveal how much Tears of the Kingdom they've played, because even if they did reveal it, the fanboys would just attack Jim for something else to continue justifying this kind of bad behavior.
    JSS: To these types of Zelda fans, a 7/10 isn't just a conflicting opinion, nothing so trivial; it's a glitch in the Matrix. It needs to be stamped out, burned off, fucking killed on sight, because it's a terrifying anomoly that introduces the threat of what they know to be true turning out to be false. When Gamers (TM) get mad over review scores, they don’t think their arguments through, they don’t consider how illogical their stated desires are, or how infantile they sound. They’re lashing out, wildly and madly, at a threat to their objective truth. Deep down, they don’t fucking care how much Tears of the Kingdom I played. They truly don’t. They only care that what they think is real, is real. And they will claim anything, no matter how unreasonably, to chop up some onions, dip that reality in gravy, and shove it down your fucking throat. Like I say, it's not about whether the game was finished. It's not about whether the reviewer spent enough arbitrary time in the game before giving their opinion in a review that ultimately won't matter, and will only have the power that the fanbase lends it.

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