Ukrainian Frogwares accuses former Focus publisher of hitting business
Focus Home Interactive removes Frogwares games from the console stores of the Ukrainian studio. The latter claims that the former publisher has no rights to this. Moreover, these actions call into question the future of the company.
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments
Today, October 26, studio
Frogwares has posted an open statement on social networks for players and partners. In it, the studio, based in Kiev, said that the publisher Focus Home Interactive is removing its games from the digital shelves of Sony and Microsoft.
The background is as follows: until 2014, Focus was the publisher of all Frogwares games. Then the cooperation was terminated. Frogware started working with another publisher — Bigben Interactive.
For a long time, this did not affect the agreements concerning previously released games in any way. Apparently (the statement does not specify this), Focus continued to sell them and pay deductions from them Frogwares.
The situation changed a week ago. Focus informed Frogwares that it would not transfer the pages of games in console stores to her (Steam will not be affected, Frogwares is listed as the publisher of all projects there, although, nuance, the author of the statement, judging by the text, does not know about it).
The reason for the refusal is the rules according to which “Focus does not transfer games (content ID and title ID on them) that belong to the developer who removed all projects from the publisher’s catalog.”
Frogwares believes that actions Focus is not justified. According to the Ukrainian studio, such rules are not mentioned in any of the previous or former Focus contracts. But they were the reason why the publisher removes his former partner from the game stores.
Magrunner: Dark Pulse
Judging by the tone of the letter, Frogwares considers such actions as a disaster.
In particular, because these projects disappear from the lists of desired players. The full list of deleted or planned to be deleted games looks like this:
- Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper (2009)
- The Testament of Sherlock Holmes (2012)
- Magrunner: Dark Pulse (2013)
- Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments (2014)
To minimize the damage, the studio, firstly, prepares new pages of games in the stores, and, secondly, tries to negotiate with the stores for help. However, Frogwares immediately clarifies that the return of games to digital shelves may take a long time. For some games, this will even be impossible, because some of the titles presented were released for the previous generation of consoles.
In conclusion, Frogwares states that over the 20 years of its existence, the studio has worked with many publishers and licensees, but has never encountered such a situation before. Now the company is losing all the revenue that comes from these titles. According to the statement, Focus is dealing a serious blow to the studio, threatening the development of future games.
The Sinking City
With a new partner
Frogwares has released two games in the last five years:
- Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter (2016)
- The Sinking City (2019)
It is unknown how successful they are.
By the way, a curious story is connected with The Sinking City. Perhaps it was this multiplatform project, which was released on PC as an exclusive Epic Games Store, that caused the termination of cooperation between Focus and Frogwares.
In 2014, Focus announced Call of Cthulhu: The Official Video Game. It was developed by Frogwares. At a certain stage, something went wrong and the development of the project was transferred to Cyanide Studio. Concerning Frogwares, then she, apparently, based on the developments of Call of Cthulhu, took up the creation The Sinking City.
Even before the release, both games were actively compared. As a result, they came out with a difference of eight months. Call of Cthulhu appeared in October 2018, The Sinking City — in June 2019. The project is significantly different, but Metacritic received similar restrained ratings.
