Frogwares Removed The Sinking City from Stores Due to Publisher Bigben Breaching Contract Terms

From GameWatcher: "Earlier this year, Lovecraftian investigative adventure game The Sinking City was silently removed from storefronts. At the time, no details on the reasoning behind the decision were shared, developer Frogwares only saying that it was "working to fix this".

A recent letter provided to us by the developer reveals the reason behind The Sinking City's removal from stores to be publisher Bigben Interactive's poor communication during development and breach of contract."

[Nanas]

Very good news. I hope BB gets sued, this is some inexcusable shit they've tried to pull. I also hope Frogwares republishes the game on their own, it's actually quite good.

[rdgneoz3]

"Once The Sinking City was released on June 27, 2019, publisher Bigben Interactive reportedly informed the developers in a letter that it was canceling the previously agreed-upon milestones, which would lead to Frogwares not receiving a cent from the sales of its game.

"Nacon had to pay immediate royalties on the first euro and invented a reason to not do so. They wrote us about theses cancellations on July 4 2019 or one week after the release of the game. They invented damages that they would self-compensate, on our revenue, for around 1.5 Million euros. They came with cancelled milestones for the game; when the game was already out, making money.", Frogwares CEO Wael Amr told GameWatcher.
...
The developer also notes that it had its logo removed from some of the PS4 and Xbox One versions of The Sinking City, while copyright text on boxes and storefront pages was "legally incorrect, creating a perception that it was not Frogwares which was the owner of the IP".

Bigben also purchased domain names related to The Sinking City and Sherlock Holmes, Frogwares also having multiple games using the latter IP in its portfolio. Frogwares also says that The Sinking City tabletop RPG was created without its knowledge, excluding the developer and IP holder from its copyright notice."

Trying to cancel payments after the fact and messing with their IP rights... I hope BB gets the book thrown at them.