The soap opera The Sinking City had taken a new turn a few days ago: It returned to Steam, followed by an allegation by its developers against the publisher Nacon. The story goes on.
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This Wednesday, March 3rd, The Sinking City disappeared again from the surface of Steam. The Lovecraftian adventure game was withdrawn by Valve following a DMCA complaint from Frogwares alleging that Nacon, the original publisher, stole and modified another version of the game to illegally re-list it. The two companies have also been controversial in open warfare since summer 2020.
The editor has made use of his right of reply to provide his version of the facts:
FROGWARES published an article on March 1, 2021 accusing NACON of pirating the game The Sinking City. NACON would like to restore some truths to these unjustified allegations.
NACON is contractually the only exclusive distributor of the game The Sinking City on STEAM.
NACON contributed to the financing of its development and the payment of the FROGWARES license fees of 8.9 million dollars (including the full payment of the version of the game for STEAM), a total investment of more than 10 million dollars in integration of marketing costs. Contrary to the claims of FROGWARES, NACON has paid all amounts due.
Today, FROGWARES has no reason not to make the game NACON available on STEAM, except in bad faith.
In the past, FROGWARES had wrongly relied on lack of payment to refuse delivery of the game on STEAM and then unsuccessfully attempted to terminate the contract, which the Paris Court of Appeals found clearly unlawful by ordering the contract to continue and FROGWARES asked for no action to be taken to prevent this continuation.
Although this decision is binding, NACON requested FROGWARES repeatedly and unsuccessfully to make the game available on STEAM. Otherwise, the contractual clause would apply, which in such a case allows the game to be adapted by a third party in order to be able to take advantage of it. FROGWARES then tried, without the knowledge of NACON and in violation of our rights, to put the game on STEAM without mentioning NACON in his capacity as publisher. This is therefore clear proof that there is no technical impossibility in the way of putting the game back on STEAM.
In view of this blocking situation, caused exclusively by FROGWARES, NACON has decided to allow players to access the game through STEAM by expressly indicating the ownership of the rights of FROGWARES to the game. FROGWARES also receives the license fees generated by STEAM sales.
By asking the gaming community via Twitter not to buy the game from STEAM, FROGWARES is again ruining our investment in this game.
NACON obviously regrets this conflict for which it is not responsible and for which it has done everything to avoid it.
NACON regrets all the more that FROGWARES has requested the removal of the game from STEAM, thereby robbing the gaming community of the unique experience that The Sinking City offers.
NACON reserves the right to take legal action against aggressive and harmful comments from FROGWARES. It is not pointed out that all court decisions in connection with the dispute between NACON FROGWARES have so far been made in favor of NACON.
There’s a good chance the case won’t stay there, especially since the statement doesn’t address the allegations of pirated and hacked the game’s source code, for which the Ukrainians have presented evidence. Enough to lose your mind
