Frogwares doesn’t appear to be having much luck with its publishers. Those of you with particularly potent memories may recall the Ukrainian developer falling victim to some policy changes at Focus Home Interactive, which meant that it had to remove various Sherlock Holmes games from the PlayStation Store in order to reclaim ownership of them.
Now it’s having an even worse issue with Nacon – formerly known as BigBen Interactive – over The Sinking City. The Lovecraftian detective game was recently removed from Sony’s storefront, as well as its subscription service PlayStation Now, where it was available as part of the platform’s portfolio. So, what’s happened this time?
Well, according to Frogwares, it signed a publishing partnership with Nacon that would give the French firm the rights to sell the release on the PlayStation 4. As a result, it was pledged development payments based on milestones and a revenue share on the final release. However, the studio claims that Nacon quickly fell behind on its payments, despite milestones being achieved.
Fascinatingly, Nacon later bought Cyanide Studios, the developer of Call of Cthulhu, and it’s insinuated in Frogwares' statement that the publisher requested the source code for The Sinking City, despite them not owning the intellectual property. Frogwares declined and ultimately stopped receiving financial contributions for four months.
Then the game came out, and Frogwares states that its previous contracts were cancelled, meaning that it wouldn’t profit from the release at all. “A retroactive cancellation on not delivering a product on time that is already out in the market is not acceptable,” it said in a statement. “That was when our legal battle began.”
The story basically escalates from there: Frogwares purports that Nacon attempted to pass off The Sinking City intellectual property as its own, buying up related domain names and even launching a tabletop RPG without the developer’s consent. After various legal battles, the outcome is that Frogwares has requested the removal of the game from storefronts in order to ensure the royalties no longer go to Nacon.
“To all the players that wish to buy The Sinking City, we are more than willing to have the game be present everywhere and we will inform you as we reappear on more platforms on our social channels,” it concluded. “For now, you can now buy a DRM free PC version of the game from our website here.” We’ll attempt to get comment from Nacon to learn its side of the story.
[source frogwares.com]
Comments 14
I managed to grab it in the PSN sale a couple of months back, it's certainly not without it's problems, especially compared to Sherlock Holmes Devils Daughter, some great ideas in there, and I think with a smoother engine and more money it could have been so much less clunky and repetitive. I will continue to support them, and I hope all this can get sorted, some real shady business going on there.
This developer has the worst luck when it comes to publishers screwing them over.
@RBMango Seems like it!
Ahh, bought the deluxe on sale. Wouldn't have, had I known what was happening.
My heart sank upon hearing this news! Sorry, had to. Seriously though, I feel sorry for Frogwares. They were right to decline and got punished unfairly.
So close to being a good game, but that awful combat capsizes the whole experience.
I was wondering why it wasn't on psplus. Wanted to give it a shot after watching the premiere of Lovecraft Country.
I have the 'day one' physical edition, came with a nice map. I found this an interesting, if very technically flawed game on PS4. I like how they tried to extend the detective formula to an open world, but the combat was pretty bad and for me detracted from the atmosphere.
Frogwares also stated that the Nintendo Switch version shall stay up on the eShop as they self-published it on there.
Noooooooooooo. Should have grabbed it back then.
As a big Lovecraft fan the look of this game is a big draw card. If only I didn’t have a pile of shame I would have bought it earlier!
That publisher sound like a-holes.
At least we can still buy it physical!
@Deadhunter that’s a bummer to hear. Third person games with poor combat absolutely ruin the experience. Arkham games, Assassins Creed for instance..
When we already have games with deep and intricate combat like Darks Souls, developers need to step up their game.
Thankfully there's plenty of physical copies still in the wild! I managed to snag myself one from eBay for $30, looking forward to playing it.
Jeez, what a nightmare.
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