The Cockatrice
Member
Frogwares Removed The Sinking City from Stores Due to | GameWatcher
The Sinking City is returning to stores after the Paris Court of Appeal has rendered a first enforceable decision in the dispute between publisher Nacon and developer Frogwares.
www.gamewatcher.com
"During production, BBI/Nacon was hundreds and hundreds of days behind in payments in total. Each sum due on average being 40 days late, while our milestones were always on time and approved by the licensee. We had to issue formal notices multiple times so that we were able to receive the money that was owed to us."
"Once BBI/Nacon bought out a competing studio working on another Lovecraftian game, they dictated that we give them our source code for The Sinking City. Once again, BBI/Nacon does not own the IP - they are a licensee. They sell the game - not develop and co-create it. After we refused to comply, we stopped receiving financial contributions for over 4 months."
"Nacon had to pay immediate royalties on the first euro and invented a reason to not do so. They wrote us about theses cancellations on July 4 2019 or one week after the release of the game. They invented damages that they would self-compensate, on our revenue, for around 1.5 Million euros. They came with cancelled milestones for the game; when the game was already out, making money. "
"We tried to contact BigBen/Nacon for 11 months and resolve these issues, but we have not received any satisfactory response from their representatives. So during a lengthy and exhausting legal battle, we finally decided to terminate the contract on April 20th, 2020, because of the numerous above-mentioned issues."
"Frogwares have already declared we’re going to be self-publishing all our future titles. It’s what’s best for the studio, our games and our fans. We started out already down this path by releasing The Sinking City on Nintendo Switch which is entirely our doing and now with Sherlock Holmes Chapter One, we’re set to release it ourselves across the board."
Publishers man..always scummy af...Hopefully going independent will allow them to focus more on making their games...less janky/buggy/rushed.