The Sinking City delisted on Steam etc.

[STiFU]

I know a lot of people here like lovecraftian horror, so you probably have heard about the game "The Sinking City". I had it on my radar for quite some time, but I recently learned that it had been removed from the Steam-store and I only now found out why.

There was a statement by the dev studio Frogwares describing how their publisher BigBen/Nacon basically tried to rob them of their interlectual property and owes the studio more than 1 million € in royalties and also a couple of months of contract payments for development milestones. This in the end lead to Frogwares having to pull the game from quite a few major stores. This story shows once again how publishers can be utter capitalist evil... 

I usually wait until games are cheaper, but after reading this, I want to show my support, so I am going to get a DRM-free copy from Gamesplanet now. I am also really curious for this game, so I am happy to pay the retail price.

[HMart]

That company seems to be the target some fishy publishers, I remember something similar happening with some of their Sherlock Games, they removed a few from most stores because of some legal reason but later they returned. I think the same will happen to this game, they will not let, I assume years of work, go down the drain like that, specially when they have the game done and full control over the IP. 

Edited November 26, 2020 by HMart

[STiFU]

It's very likely the same publisher that caused them problems, as "Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter" was also published by BigBen.

[revelator]

Game is quite good though a bit of an offshot lovecraftian wise, cthylla ?!? instead of cthulhu so his daughter ( damn his sexlive must be scarier than the actual horror stories about him xD ).

Game is mostly detective work though some areas can be dangerous but nothing to serious.

Compared with the old dark corners its easy mode, but that one was plagued by so many bugs that it did not matter how good you were.

[STiFU]

5 hours ago, revelator said:

Compared with the old dark corners its easy mode, but that one was plagued by so many bugs that it did not matter how good you were.

Still loved "Call of Cthulhu", 'though. So it seems, the sinking city is gonna be perfect for me. Thanks for the brief review.

[revelator]

Amazing game to bad it newer got the love it deserved my local copy has a huge amount of bugs fixed, but i can only get so far without the source code.

[STiFU]

The battle continues. The game has been put on Steam again, but not by the rights holder...

 

[revelator]

Luckily i bought it before all the troubles began

[Petike the Taffer]

I feel sorry for Frogwares. They are a good developer and have only been improving as time has gone on.

Pity they don't have much luck with publishers.

I remember that Frictional Games ran into the same problem with their first Penumbra game back in the day. The British publisher they teamed up with nearly scammed them, so they published the rest of the series and its compilations under Paradox, and have largelly self-published since.

I get the impression many smaller indie studios tend to pick these smaller publishers because it's simply more economical, but the inherent risk is that a lot of these publishers either go out of business quickly or aren't even as minimally scrupulous as some of the bigger publishers (and I say that as someone completely unwilling to defend big game publishers, especially the triple-A malarkey of EA or Activision-Blizzard).

[revelator]

Ugh that sucks

[Kurshok]

Too bad. Looked like a good game.

[STiFU]

 

[Destined]

WTF, this is seriously evil! They didn't even bother to use new encryption keys. I mean, I am no programmer, so I didn't know that this was a thing (although it makes sense), but they should have known and not been so stupid

[HMart]

I will not jump immediately 100% to the side of Frogwares, like many here, why, because this seems really suspicious to me, Nanco left huge clues behind, like they didn't care if they got caught, is if they are very sure they will win any law suit frogwares throw at them and that maybe because of something we don't know. We only heard one side here. 

But don't think I condone the behavior or any publisher stealing developers. 

Edited March 23, 2021 by HMart

[revelator]

omg

[STiFU]

20 hours ago, HMart said:

I will not jump immediately 100% to the side of Frogwares, like many here, why, because this seems really suspicious to me, Nanco left huge clues behind, like they didn't care if they got caught, is if they are very sure they will win any law suit frogwares throw at them and that maybe because of something we don't know. We only heard one side here. 

But don't think I condone the behavior or any publisher stealing developers. 

My bet would be "lack of expertise" in Nacon's Management, rather than "believing they are on the right side". What they did in this instance is definitely illegal, because the version uploaded to Games Planet never belonged to them.

[Hooded Lantern]

crazy horse shit man