Frogwares, the studio involved in a close dispute with the publisher Nacon over their game, The Sinking City, used a DMCA statement to remove it from the Steam store, confirmed a Valve spokesman.
For Vice on Tuesday night, Valve spokesman Doug Lombardi said that Steam “received a DMCA withdrawal notice” for the version The Sinking City that Nacon sent – what Frogwares calls a hacked and pirated copy of your game. “So we responded to that warning,” said Lombardi.
The Sinking City is no longer searchable within Steam itself, and external links to the game’s product page now redirect to the main showcase.
In a statement provided to Polygon, Frogwares said that the version sold on Steam “contains content over which Nacon has absolutely no rights – namely, The Merciful Madness DLC”. The studio said it sent the DMCA removal request to Valve because it was “our most effective tool to give us time to obtain more potential evidence and also to initiate the necessary and time-consuming additional legal processes to prevent this from happening again.”
A Nacon spokesman addressed Polygon to a statement the publisher gave on Tuesday about the controversy, and declined to make any further comments regarding the removal of the Steam DMCA.
“In the past, Frogwares unduly relied on allegations of non-payment to refuse delivery of the game on Steam, at which point they unsuccessfully tried to terminate the contract,” Nacon said in its statement. Nacon said that “despite the blocking situation created exclusively by Frogwares”, it still made the game available to players on Steam (at least until the crash on Tuesday) and that it would pay Frogwares royalties on those sales.
“By encouraging the gaming community via Twitter not to buy the game on Steam, Frogwares is once again sabotaging our investments in the game,” said Nacon.
A Frogwares representative pointed out to Polygon that The Merciful Madness was “made for the first time for the Nintendo Switch version of The Sinking City,”, Which was released in the fall of 2019, two months after the versions for PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One published by Nacon. This version of The Sinking City “It belongs to Frogwares in its entirety,” said the studio’s representative. “When Frogwares was able to launch the game on other platforms, such as PS5 (in February) or via Gamesplanet, they included this DLC.”
Last summer, Frogwares and Nacon went to court in France (where Nacon is based; Frogwares is based in Kiev, Ukraine) in a dispute over royalties for The Sinking City. An appeals court ruled in October that Frogwares illegally terminated its contract with Nacon. Although the dispute continues, a judge told Frogwares to “refrain from any action on the breach of this contract”, as well as “any action that prevents this continuation”.
With this decision, Nacon returned to online stores, such as Steam, to start selling The Sinking City again. To do this, however, Nacon says it was entitled to a full version of the Frogwares game. Frogwares disputes this and is arguing in court – in a case the studio says could take years to resolve. Therefore, Frogwares claims, Nacon decided to sell the game on its own, resulting in the version that Frogwares considers “hacked” and “pirated”.
Update (March 3): The Frogwares representative provided additional comments from the studio, explaining his side of the dispute.
Frogwares developers note that, in the legal dispute, “Nacon made two attempts to get a separate court to order Frogwares [to] deliver the master version of Steam [of The Sinking City]. Both attempts were rejected by the courts. “
Therefore, “any updated version of the game that Nacon loads on Steam could not come from us,” said Frogwares. “The Steam version, for a technicality, is in legal limbo, and instead of working with us on a deal … or waiting [for] In the final verdict of the trial court, Nacon chose to break a version of the game that we legitimately provided to a partner (Gamesplanet), added DLC to which they had no rights and tried to cover up their tracks by removing various watermarks and identifying logos . “
Frogwares clarified that the versions of The Sinking City available on Microsoft Store, PlayStation Store, Nintendo eShop, Origin and Gamesplanet “are all published by Frogwares. Our contract with Nacon never mentioned these platforms. ”The studio also added that more platforms” are likely to come in the near future “.