Frogwares claims the Sinking City version on Steam isn’t theirs

The sinking city, a Lovecraftian horror crime game from Ukrainian studio Frogwares, returned to Steam on Friday after an absence of several months. But Frogwares alleges that the game sold on Valve’s platform is not actually the game it created – the latest development in an ongoing dispute between Frogwares and Nacon, the French company that released The sinking city.

“Frogwares did not create the version of @thesinkingcity which is now for sale on @Steam,” Frogwares said in a tweet on Friday. “We do not recommend purchasing this version. More news soon. “

If you look at the Steam page for The sinking city, you’ll see an ad posted on Friday morning saying the game is “now available on Steam,” offering a 60% discount for next week. Publishers are controlling what appears in a Steam listing, and it appears Nacon wrote this post to alert potential customers that the game had returned to the platform.

But Frogwares used a smart tactic to spread its message on Steam: The News section of a product’s Steam page pulls tweets from sources such as the official Frogwares account, so the aforementioned tweet asking people to do not purchase the Steam version of The sinking city … appeared on Steam. (It doesn’t appear up there anymore, but here’s a screenshot we took.)

Image: Valve via polygon

At the moment, the official Frogwares website is not linked to the Steam list, but to a version for sale on Gamesplanet. The listing on Steam is greatly reduced – $ 16 after the 60% discount, compared to $ 42.49 on Gamesplanet. Frogwares has not confirmed this information itself, but recent customer reviews on Steam allege that the version of The sinking city being sold there isn’t the most up-to-date iteration of the game.

This development is part of a series of conflicts between Frogwares and Nacon since The sinking city launched in the summer of 2019. The game disappeared from most online storefronts in August 2020 due to a royalty dispute. At the time, Frogwares claimed in an open letter that Nacon owed the studio “around $ 1 million” and published misleading marketing that implied that Nacon was the developer of the game.

In October, the Paris Court of Appeal issued a first judgment declaring that Frogwares had illegally terminated its contract, and ordered Frogwares to “refrain from any action in breach of contract, [and to] refrain from any action that prevents this pursuit. This decision led Nacon, at the beginning of January, to ask distributors to start selling The sinking city again. The game returned to the Xbox Store at the time and is now back on Steam as well as the PlayStation Store; it is also available on Nintendo Switch. Nacon noted in his January press release that the legal battle has been “still pending in French courts for several months”.

We’ve reached out to Frogwares, Nacon, and Valve for feedback, and we’ll update this article as we get back to you.