The developers of Sinking City, Frogwares, accused the publisher Nacon of pirating the game and of uploading an illegal copy on Steam. Nacon published a version of the RPG Lovecraftian in the Valve store on Friday, which was quickly followed by Frogwares asking fans not to buy it. The two have been involved in a complicated legal dispute over the game since last year. Now, the developers believe that Nacon “broke, hacked, changed the game’s code and content” to put it on Steam and allegedly prevent Frogwares from making money from a game they claim to own.
Frogwares and Nacon have been involved in a legal dispute since the summer of last year. At first, Frogwares claimed that Nacon breached its contract during game development due to lack of payments, and allegedly tried to claim the game’s copyright as its own.
The developers removed the game from the sale of some digital stores to prevent sales from going to Nacon. However, in October, French courts concluded that this illegally terminated their contract with the publisher and had to be nice to them until the legal dispute was resolved.
The Sinking City started appearing in digital stores again in January, but the version that was released on Steam mysteriously disappeared again shortly thereafter. It only returned last Friday, and now the developers claim that this new version is pirated that Nacon allegedly stole from another store.
In a blog post, Frogwares states that the version of the game currently on Steam is the one that was originally purchased from Gamesplanet. They claim that Nacon changed it to remove Gamesplanet watermarks and logos, as well as ads for Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes game.
“To make changes, Nacon had only one way: to decompile or hack the game using a secret key created by Frogwares, since the entire content of the game is archived with an Epic Unreal Engine encryption system,” say the developers.
“To make it clear, this is hacking and when hacking is aimed at stealing a product and making money from it, it is called piracy or counterfeiting. To achieve this goal, programmers with serious skills need to be involved. This is not a DIY job. by inexperienced people, this is done by programmers who know the Unreal engine well. ”
They explain the technology of all this in more detail, which you can read in the blog post or get an idea in this video explainer that they did.
“We believe that Nacon did this to hide the game’s fraudulent exploitation on Steam, but also on other portals to which they may be planning to send the game. Nacon wants Frogwares or anyone, including the French Justice, to never know the true scope of the game’s exploration “, says Frogwares.
The developers point out that “they still fully trust Steam and Gamesplanet”. They believe that Nacon legally bought The Sinking City on Gamesplanet before they were supposed to hack, and that Steam would have no way of knowing that the game was supposedly pirated.
“Nacon has proven that it is willing to do everything it can to serve its interests, including illegal actions. They ignored the ruling and circumvented them, hacking The Sinking City to deceive their partners, Steam first,” Frogwares to say.
“There is long-term damage that we need to take care of. Nacon unzipped our data, stole our source code and used it. Nacon can create a new version of The Sinking City using our assets; they can resell, reuse, recycle our content and our tools, etc. ”
Last night, Nacon responded to Frogwares’ comment by asking players not to buy the game on Steam. Here is their statement:
“We are sorry that Frogwares persists in disrupting the launch of Cidade do Sundamento. It was Frogwares that came to Nacon to request financing for the development of the game and, to date, more than 10 million euros have been paid to Frogwares by Nacon. it was Frogwares that counted on our marketing and promotion teams, representing thousands of hours of work and several million euros of investment. Now that the game has been fully developed and published, largely thanks to Nacon’s money and work, Frogwares would like to review the terms of the contract for its exclusive benefit. It is easy to play the victim, but all we are looking for is for Frogwares to respect its commitments in the contract and as required by the courts.
“Regarding feedback on the launch of Sinking City on Steam, this is an official and complete version. However, due to the lack of cooperation with Frogwares, we are unable to integrate specific Steam features (cloud economy / achievements). , this version contains only the base game, with no additional content. Despite this, we have organized the release so that Steam fans can enjoy the game. “
Nacon has not yet responded to the allegation of piracy. I contacted them to comment and will update this post if I receive a response.