In the latest update on the ongoing debacle surrounding The Sinking City, Steam has once again pulled Frogwares’ horror-mystery from its storefront, following the developer’s issuing of a DMCA against publisher Nacon, with whom it is embroiled in an increasingly ugly legal dispute.
As reported by Vice, Frogwares issued the DMCA following on from the Ukrainian studios’ recent allegations that Nacon pirated a copy of the 2019 release from a digital storefront, before re-submitting the game for sale on the Steam platform. Earlier this week, Frogwares released an in-depth video explaining these particularly serious accusations.
“The Sinking City has been in dispute in French courts for a while,” Valve’s VP of marketing Doug Lombardi told Vice. “An interim decision last fall appeared to give Nacon the right to distribute the game on Steam while the litigation proceeded. However, today we received a DMCA take-down notice for the version that Nacon recently shipped, so we have responded to that notice.”
This is not the first time The Sinking City has been removed from the Steam store. Back in August 2020, Frogwares removed the title itself, protesting numerous claims against Nacon (then Bigben Interactive) that included copyright dispute and the alleged withholding of royalties. The Sinking City would eventually return to Steam following a Parisian court’s ruling that Frogwares had acted unlawfully by removing the game from sale.
In a statement posted earlier this week, Nacon suggested that Frogwares was attempting to “revise the terms of the contract to their sole advantage”. “It’s easy to play the victim,” said the French publisher. “All we seek is that Frogwares respect its commitments both in the contract and as demanded by the courts.”
As of this writing, The Sinking City is unavailable to purchase on Steam. This status remains likely for some time, as the ongoing dispute becomes ever-more provocative and combustible.
The Sinking City developer uses DMCA to remove its own game from Steam [Vice]
Source: Destructoid The Sinking City pulled from Steam yet again after Frogwares issues DMCA