Frogwares, the developer behind the Sherlock Holmes game series, today published a lengthy blog post detailing how it believes its former publisher stole a copy of its 2019 game The Sinking City, and uploaded it to Steam. This is the culmination of a long and messy legal fight between the two entities — surprisingly the Lovecraftian horror is the least nasty part of this whole thing.
The whole story began to emerge when Frogwares posted on Twitter last Friday that the version of Sinking City uploaded to Steam was not its own, and urged gamers not to play it. This version was published by Nacon, which Frogwares is currently in a legal dispute with over this very game, which had been delisted from Steam over all the fuss. Frogwares at the time promised more information on the situation, and now they’ve provided it in a blog post published on the studio’s website.
According to Frogwares, Nacon demanded a new master of the game be uploaded to Steam, and Frogwares declined — but a version of the game was uploaded anyway. This version was bought from Gamesplanet, a Frogware licensee, and Frogwares alleges that Nacon hacked the game to replace the Gamesplanet logo with Nacon’s own, and then uploaded this version to Steam. Frogwares also claims this isn’t the first time Nacon has attempted this.
Nacon defended itself over the weekend by pointing out it’s put a lot of money into Sinking City and that the version of the game on Steam is lacking in certain features, which is why it requested a new master in the first place. The Sinking City is still delisted from some online stores at the time of this writing. The reviews of the Steam version of the game have swiftly taken a turn for the negative as this news has come out.
Source: Frogwares
