The Sinking City, a Lovecraftian action-adventure game from Frogwares, has been delisted from several notable storefronts. Why? Frogwares has penned an open letter explaining.
In a tweet earlier today, the development team behind The Sinking City released an open letter explaining why they have chosen to delist their game. It begins with a simple summarization of the reasoning behind it:
“We were forced to terminate the contract with our licensee for several breaches of our agreement”
The Sinking City Delisted Due To BBI/Nacon issues
In an effort to summarise what the rest of the open letter has to say… It seems that all the problems stem from BigBen Interactive/ Nacon.
Throughout production, BBI/ Nacon fell behind the agreed-upon payments despite continued punctuality from Frogwares. The agreement between the two was made that Frogwares would receive part payments for each production milestone they hit on schedule. Despite these being approved by the licensee, each payment was reportedly 40 days late on average. This put undue stress and pressure on the Frogwares team that was exacerbated further by BBI/ Nacon.
They purchased another studio, peers, and competitors to Frogwares who were working on a similar title. Due to the similarities in projects, BBI/ Nacon attempted to dictate Frogwares to hand over their source code for The Sinking City. BBI/ Nacon does not own the IP, rather they own the commercialization rights, so naturally, Frogwares declined. This led to a 4-month embargo of financial contributions from BBI/ Nacon.
The unprofessional nature of BBI/ Nacon continued when they continually provided Frogwares with inconsistent and muddy details regarding sales forecasts and deals. They knew about an exclusivity agreement with the Epic Games Store, but that was it.
“We weren’t sure how potential sales could turn out, meaning that we were not able to properly plan our future.”
Frogwares Began A Legal Battle In August 2019
The final straw came when BBI/ Nacon attempted to retroactively cancel the production milestones Frogwares had worked to, meaning that they would not receive any profits from the sales. The lawsuit Frogwares filed, however, opened up a whole other array of agreement breaches from BBI/ Nacon.
BBI/ Nacon began to provide income reports, but they were undocumented and incomplete. They also removed Frogwares’ logo from a number of marketing materials and covers while also having legally-incorrect storefront pages. This all appeared as an attempt to erase Frogwares from any connection with the product. Furthermore, BBI/ Nacon purchased a number of domain names relating to both The Sinking City and Sherlock Holmes (another Frogwares IP) without notifying them. A TTRPG was also created from The Sinking City, featuring the wrong copyright notice. It was then distributed freely without Frogwares’ knowledge.
Frogwares Terminated The Agreement For A Number Of Legal Breaches
“In our email exchange, BBI/Nacon essentially wrote that the contract cannot be terminated because of the emergency laws in France, aimed to protect businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, and at the same time BBI/Nacon refused to fulfill their obligations toward us (payment, documented reports, etc…)”
Communication from BBI/ Nacon suggested that they benefited greatly from “lockdown” sales throughout the last quarter. This has led Frogwares to estimate that they are owed roughly 1 million euros in royalties from sales.
Frogwares hope this open letter provides an explanation to both consumers and industry professionals. In addition, they hope it helps work towards making the video games industry more ethical as a whole. It also provides links to where The Sinking City can still be purchased.
To read the Open Letter in full for yourself, please follow this link here: Frogwares Open Letter
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