Ukrainian developer Frogwares says publisher Nacon hacked his game The Sinking City and illegally published it on Steam. The two parties had made an earlier agreement, but it was canceled. The companies have been fighting for some time.
The center of the sunken city Since late February on Steam, On behalf of publisher Nacon and with Frogwares as developer. Since the release of Steam, the developer has said that players will receive these No purchase requiredBecause it is not the official version.
According to Frogwares, publisher Nacon bought the game on Gamesplanet, dismantled that version, and then sent a pirated copy to Valve, which is the version now available on Steam. at Video on YouTube at In a blog post The developer explains exactly how this went according to him.
Nacon, known as Bigben Interactive a year ago, was experimenting The main – the master Of the game through lawsuits, but a French judge twice ruled that Frogwares don’t have to hand it over to the publisher. A lawsuit remains pending over Nacon’s posting of the Steam release, which Frogwares says won’t be decided until the months or years to come.
Frogwares has analyzed the version now on Steam and saw traces that prove it to be the version of the game released by the developer on Gamesplanet. Nacon broke the game and removed the logos and Implementation of Modified. The publisher also needed an encryption key for that, and Frogwares says it is known how the company obtained it. The developer doesn’t provide details on this, but the studio wants to present this as evidence in a lawsuit.
According to Frogwares, Nacon copied the Deluxe version of the game and put it on Steam. It contains DLC released after the collaboration between Frogwares and Nacon ended. So the Ukrainian developer accuses the French publisher of stealing this content.
Nacon says according to Eurogamer In a comment that Steam only has the regular version of the game and that the publisher has the right to publish it. Nacon says he paid Frogwares more than ten million euros to develop the game. The studio wants to review the terms in the contract in its favor, according to the publisher. According to Nacon, the Steam version is an official version and not a pirated version.
The Sinking City came out in 2019, but with the game out, Frogwares and Nacon had an argument About payments and benefits. And so Frogwares broke off cooperation with the publisher and removed the game from its digital download stores. According to the studio, the payments are hundreds of days late and Nacon only had the right to publish the game, while the publisher also claims to have the intellectual property rights.
