Don't thank God for these trivial facts. Thank God only for Jim Sterling.
- Author's Saving Throw: The "Screw Steam" episode pissed off a lot of people, with many accusing them of shilling for the Epic Games Store (this is in spite of the fact they listed problems with the store too), which at tie time, had been criticized for its lack of key features (no shopping cart, for example), while using what profits they've gotten from selling Unreal Game Engine licenses, as well as the success of Fortnite to buy up popular games like Metro Exodus as timed exclusives, and controversies that come with that news often get Epic painted in a (justifiably) bad light. In "The Problems With The Epic Store", Jim clarified that while they like the idea of a digital distribution platform competing with Steam, something sorely needed as Valve Corporation has basically monopolised the PC Gaming market, and even believes the Epic store currently offers many studios a better deal in a number of ways (their 12/88 percentage cut for a start is one hell of an incentive for indie devs, and Jim doesn't blame indies for taking such deals when Steam is so saturated with asset flips and general competition), but Epic comes off as trying to strong-arm customers with exclusives, which Jim notes that it cannot be a viable long-term strategy, especially since it's already breeding bad blood, and the store has nothing else going for it. Later on in "The Epic Brutality Of Unchecked Capitalism" they acknowledge their previous video supporting the Epic Store, but tears into it a bit for its numerous anti-consumer aspects, though they clarify that Epic still has to fight dirty to compete with Valve due to the landscape of "AAA capitalism" encouraging underhanded tactics in the industry, or they'll simply be ignored.
- Colbert Bump:
- "Chains Of Love" has gotten a new recognition thanks to Jim's constant use. Similarly, "Stress" by Jim's Big Ego has gained newfound traction on Spotify after it became the show's new theme song in 2017.
- The entire point of the series Greenlight Good Stuff is for this to kick in for games that genuinely deserve to be Greenlit. As of the Jimquisition episode "When Jim Sterling Was Sued By Digital Homicide for $10 Million", it had a one hundred per cent success rate.
- Content creator SidAlpha
initially gained a small but dedicated fanbase covering Digital Homicide in the wake of Jim's being sued. Fastforward to February 2017, where Jim's coverage of Sid's DMCA strike from Dentola Studios caused his subscribers to quadruple. - Fellow game reviewer IAmPattyJack was given a fraudulent DMCA takedown by Richard La Ruina for including La Ruina's panned game "Super Seducer" in his playlist "X Is the Worst Game Ever". After Jim did a video going over everything involved in the series of events, in mere hours PJ's subscriber count spiked and is continuing to increase.
- Corpsing:
- In "Game Over, Randy", Jim inadvertently knocks the Xenomorph figurine off the podium with their Dildo Bat. They begin laughing and lose their train of thought.
- In "The Mighty Has Fallen", Jim calls those who watch the show for free (that is, non-Patreon supporters) "fucking parasites" as a joke. They immediately laugh at that comment, claiming they were "goof-bushed" by themselves.
- In "Game Over, Randy"
- Creator Backlash:
- While they've also gleefully mocked those who hated the show at first, Jim's been fairly open about seeing their first few episodes on The Escapist and all the episodes they did on Destructoid's YouTube channel as pretty crap. Jim took the early criticism well and retooled the show as they went on, keeping the anger but applying more actual thought to the rage.
- They have also publicly apologized and expressed regret for trying to be edgy in the early days of the Jimquisition, including making hateful jokes about marginalized people and intentionally designing the original backdrop with a red, black and white color scheme to evoke Nazi symbolism. Yes, really.
- Jim has made it clear they regret ever endorsing the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise or its creator Scott Cawthon, after it was revealed in 2021 that Scott had donated over $40,000 to Donald Trump and other Republican candidates. Jim went as far as to say Scott could "go fuck himself".
- Creator Killer: Jim was instrumental in the self-destruction of Digital Homicide Studios, beginning when Jim's initial video on The Slaughtering Grounds led to Digital Homicide suing them for slander, and then attempting to subpoena Valve as part of an attempt to sue multiple Steam users who panned the game. This led to Steam removing any and all material DHS did from the service. Afterwards, the litigation drained DHS's bank account and, along with the public backlash, resulted them shutting down just before their lawsuit against Jim was dropped. Digital Homicide has since only stuck around as a key reseller, with their game development days clearly behind them.
- Dear Negative Reader: Jim will sometimes publish a response aimed at people who flooded them what they considered to be stupid criticism or disproportionate hatred.
- "Sky Hype" was made in response to the overly angry and vindictive fans of No Man's Sky that attacked Jim and DDOSd their web site just because they gave the game a 5/10. Jim mocks the fans by calling them "No Man's Boys" and rips them a new one for going so far out of their way to threaten and attack Jim over a single review, when they could have spent that time better by actually playing the game they claimed to love.
- "Weapon Durability, Fanbase Fragility" was created in response to the vitriol brought against them for their criticisms of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in regards to, chiefly, the game's weapon durability system (even though Jim gave the game a respectable score of 7/10 and mentions repeatedly that, flawed though they thought the game, they still enjoyed it, fans were understandably mad that Jim claimed to get killed in one hit from full health with good armor, despite the fact that a hidden game mechanic makes this impossible, meaning they were either wrong or lying).
- While a simple mockery, Jim made a blog post titled "A Full And Frank Apology For My Reviews Of Breath Of The Wild And Yooka-Laylee" and simply said "Here, have a Pepsi", showing that they are not sorry about the backlash their reviews gotten. The post is also a Take That! against the controversial Pepsi ad showing Kylee Jenner giving a riot cop a Pepsi to resolve a confrontation.
- "Sky Hype"
- Distanced from Current Events: One of the main reasons given for the 2017 retool was that the over-the-top fascist parody didn't work anymore when actual unironic fascist activists were getting popular.
- Executive Meddling: Jim mentions on their blog that certain video game publishers refuse to give them review copies of their games and when they asked why, they never got a straight answer. The next day, Jim finds out from some of their inside connections that publishers consider Jim too much of a wild card and a risk to give review copies, which most likely means that publishers only want to give review copies to reviewers who they know will give favorable reviews and not be polarizing.
- I Knew It!: Towards the end of the "Turning Players into Payers" episode, Jim lists several predictions they made in the past that everyone dismissed them for, only for those predictions to become true and everyone acting like they knew it all along. Their predictions consisted of Steam's quality going down the tubes, loot boxes from Overwatch getting worse and spreading to other games, and Visceral Studios being shut down by EA (though Jim notes that they're not happy about being right on that one). Each flashback Jim shows a screenshot of their original prediction from that year and is followed up by the victory dance theme from Kirby.
- Promoted Fanboy:
- In addition to doing voice work in a handful of indie games, Jim is also a fan of professional wrestling. When the Mississippi-based Pro Wrestling EGO challenged their wrestling persona Sterdust, Jim readily accepted. In addition to wrestling as Sterdust, Jim Sterling also portrays themself as Sterdust's promoter in a similar vein to Paul Bearer and Paul Heyman.
- After repeatedly gushing about Vampire Survivors on the Podquisition, Jim was hired to write for the in-game Bestiary.
- Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Show editor and artist Justin McDaniel was fired in early 2023 after apparently badmouthing Steph in private over his pay.
- Screwed by the Lawyers: Has had this happen to them quite frequently due to indie developers not being able to handle Jim's harsh criticism on their games. A frequent tactic the developers would use is issuing a copyright claim on the offending video, which has the video taken down and puts Jim's channel in bad standing. Jim would then issue a counterclaim so that the developer would have to give actual evidence in court (which YouTube does not get involved with). Usually, the developers never follow through, so Jim is just inconvenienced as they wait for their video to go back online. However, Digital Homicide, an indie studio they've tussled with since 2014, actually followed up on their threats to sue Jim and did so in March 2016. While Jim was still able to produce content for their channel, the stress and frustration from the lawsuit did affect their ability to make content since now their time was divided between their work and the lawsuit that they cannot talk about publicly.
- Streisand Effect: Experienced this when their web site got DDOSd by overzealous fans of No Man's Sky simply because they gave the game a score of 5/10. Despite the web site crashing, Jim easily tells people that they can find a cached copy of the review from Google and they also posted the review on Reddit. Not only was Jim's site back online in a day, but news of the attack had spread and caused people who weren't interested in the review flocking in droves to see why the review pissed off so many fans in the first place. Jim even goes on to say that the attack literally did nothing to them overall since traffic generated doesn't make them money due to no ads on the site and all money they get is purely from their Patreon. Jim followed up the events with a Jimquisition episode dedicated to talking about all the hype that the game caused and blasting the fans that attacked them.
- Throw It In!: "Game Journalism of Thrones" begins with Jim about to launch into a passionate, spoiler-laden discussion of the Game of Thrones finale, only to be victim of a "milkshaking"note , only to then run off in panic when a police siren starts up in the distance. An outtake at the end of the episode reveals that the siren going off at that particular moment was a complete coincidence, but was just too perfect not to use.
- Trolling Creator: They love indulging in this whenever certain people or fandoms piss them off. Fans of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are a frequent target of their snark ever since they DDOS'd their website over their 7/10 review score of the game. After declaring they weren't doing traditional reviews anymore, they show a 7/10 at the end of their impressions of Super Mario Odyssey to mock people gullible enough to believe a fake 7/10 review of the game (which they hadn't even played yet at the time) ascribed to them that had been circulated by another troll. For their 2017 games of the year awards episode, the video's thumbnail shows Link on the cover, but not a single Zelda game was ever shown and it pissed off the fanboys even further. Jim admits that their constant trolling of Zelda fans is petty and they love relishing in it.
- Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: While Jim was getting bored of doing standard reviews, they did say that part of the reason on why they won't do traditional reviews anymore was to avoid the headache and harassment they get every time they give a game a review score that no one likes.
- Thankfully this seems to have turned around once she started doing text based reviews again for fun in 2022.
