Earlier this year The Sinking City, the investigative adventure game based on the works of the famous writer Howard Philip Lovecraft, has been quietly removed from numerous online stores. During these months, no information had yet been released on the alleged reason why the game had been removed from the stores, and the developer Frogswares he simply stated that "he was working to solve this problem". A recent statement, released in the last few hours by the developer, reveals that the reason behind The Sinking City's removal from stores would be a legal dispute in progress with the publisher BigBen Interactive, today nacon, which on several occasions he would not have respected the terms signed in the agreement.
As reported by Frogwares, in fact, BigBen Interactive / Nacon would not have respected many of the terms initially signed in the agreement, including the question of payments, which would always arrive with an average delay of forty days. Furthermore, Frogwares stated that the delay in payments would have been intentional, especially after the acquisition by BigBen Interactive / Nacon of another studio, which at that time was working on a title inspired by the stories of Lovecraft, namely Call of Cthulhu di Cyanide Studio. Right after the acquisition of the new development studio, BigBen Interactive / Nacon would try to claim the source code of The Sinking City, to be able to pass it on to the developers of the other studio. Here is part of the statement released by Frogwares:
During production, BigBen Interactive / Nacon was hundreds and hundreds of days late in payments in total. Every sum due came with an average of 40 days late, while our goals were always on time and approved. We had to issue formal notices several times in order to receive the money we owed. Once BigBen Interactive / Nacon bought a competing development studio, which at the time was working on another Lovecraftian game, they forced us to provide them with our source code of The Sinking City. Again, BigBen Interactive / Nacon does not own the IP. They sell the game, they didn't create or develop it. When we refused, we stopped receiving financial contributions for over 4 months. We have been trying to contact BigBen Interactive / Nacon for 11 months to try to resolve these issues, but have not received any satisfactory responses from their representatives. So, during a long and grueling legal battle, we finally decided to terminate the contract on April 20, 2020, due to the numerous problems mentioned above.
Since then, the development studio has not yet received any payments, for a total that now amounts to approx one million euros. Frogwares' only solution was to ask the stores for remove the title from their catalogs for stop sales for the benefit of BigBen Interactive / Nacon. At the moment Nacon has not yet responded to the accusations received by the development studio, so we just have to wait for more information on the fate of The Sinking City which, at the moment, can be purchased on the official Frogwares website.
