The Sinking City Returns To Stores Amidst Legal Battle

Three days, just three days into the year before I had to cover some corporate slap-fight. I hate 2021. At least it is not that Epic and Apple nonsense I covered last year; instead, we’re going to talk about a messy and chaotic corporate nitpick, slap-fight, and the worst of all, contract disputes. It’s something that started last year when The Sinking City, which Taylor and Alexx both wrote about back in 2019, was delisted from several storefronts. This is not to be confused with the similarly slap-fight-y dispute that developer Frogwares had with Focus Home Interactive back in 2019.

Last August, Frogwares released their lengthy open letter on the reasons for The Sinking City being removed from the storefronts, stating it was a matter of public record at that point. Through it all, the company claims the publisher Nacon (formerly BigBen Interactive) would often be late on payment. This was something that only became more apparent to Frogwares when the publisher purchased another studio with a similarly Lovecraftian game. In the statement, they said: “[This is when] they dictated that we give them our source code for The Sinking City. Once again, BBI/Nacon does not own the IP – they are a licensee. They sell the game – not develop and co-create it. After we refused to comply, we stopped receiving financial contributions for over 4 months.”

Moreover, when the studio finally released the game back in June of 2019, Nacon reportedly claimed a milestone previously agreed upon was now retroactively being canceled; therefore, the developer would not be paid. With mounting issues transpiring, the developer began a lawsuit with the publisher in 2019, finally deciding to terminate the contract which was signed back in 2017 on April 20th, 2020. As a result of sweeping French emergency laws in place to protect businesses doing the COVID-19 pandemic, Nacon claims this contact cannot be terminated.

According to French courts, this seems to be the case. In a press release published yesterday by Nacon as the game returned to storefronts, they claimed a victory in the short-term as courts rule Frogwares unlawfully terminated their contract. In the statement, “The Court ruled that Frogwares had terminated the contract in a ‘manifestly unlawful’ manner and, as a result, ordered, as a ‘precautionary measure, the continuation of the contract (…) until its term or until a decision is made on the breach of this contract and ordered Frogwares Ireland to refrain from any action on the breach of this contract and ordered Frogwares Ireland to refrain from any action that impedes this continuation (…)’.”

This does not mean the legal battle is over, though it does mean the very public poo-slinging contest has already begun. “NACON is continuing its action in defense of its rights and has proceeded with the execution of this court decision,” they stated in the press release. They went on to say very strongly, “by asking platforms and sites to put The Sinking City game back online so that no one is held hostage to this situation.”

Since this announcement, the game has once again been listed on the Steam storefront with all the DLC; though, seemingly without the ability to purchase the game (at the time of writing). If you want to purchase it, it has stayed on the US storefront of ORIGIN since its original delisting, though it is not available in the UK. It has also returned to the Microsoft store in both the UK and US, at the full £49.99 and $59.99 respectively. However, at the time of writing it has not returned to the PlayStation storefront. Closing their press release, Nacon stated: “As of today, The Sinking City is available again for sale on the Microsoft Store for Xbox One. The game will return on Steam (PC) and PlayStation Store (PS4) at a later date.“