i've had those sherlock holmes games on my wishlist for a long time and thought of getting them last sale but kinda forget about them, too bad to see suck things happend i remember i was lucky enough to get ducktales just few hours before it got completely delisted as well :(
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Frogware is the publisher of Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments on Steam, so I don't think it's about to delisted as PCGamer claims unless Frogware is removing it themselves.
As for Focus Home Interactive, I'm gonna remove all their games from my wishlist for this poopy behavior.
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Atleast one cheap.
https://www.eneba.com/steam-sherlock-holmes-the-secret-of-the-silver-earring-steam-key-global 1.00 euro + fees.
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So to be clear, will it just be Crime and Punishment (possibly) or all games? And soon?
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Yes, and September 29th
The Official Statement states the following:
Full list:
On Steam, PS4, Xbox One, PS3 and Xbox 360: Sherlock Holmes Crimes & Punishments availability ends on September 29th.
Already taken down on PS3: The Testament of Sherlock Holmes, Magrunner: Dark Pulse
Already taken down on Xbox 360: Sherlock Holmes versus Jack The Ripper, The Testament Of Sherlock Holmes, Magrunner: Dark Pulse
On Steam, The Testament of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes Vs. Jack The Ripper and Magrunner: Dark Pulse are published by Frogwares and not by Focus Home Interactive.Comment has been collapsed.
I went here: https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/Focus/
then clicked on the gear on the right, and clicked "Ignore this creator" so I don't have to worry about accidentally supporting them in the future.
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It's gotta start somewhere. If the studios under Focus don't know about the crap that's happening then they need to.
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yep, that is going to suck
just when we thought Focus was turning into an exemplar AA publisher for all studios out there...
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Let us encourage Focus to release on GOG, whether or not they can stay on steam
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For legal reasons, it's probably a good idea to not disclose such information.
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By legal reasons, I mean they want to keep it as generalised as possible, NOT that they aren't bound by a law not to.
It's basically the opposite of accusing someone specifically of doing something wrong when it wasn't actually them who instigated the mess to start with. That's all I meant. Like if they take Focus to court, but they've already defamed the person they assumed it was, it doesn't set a good precedent for setting this straight with the publisher itself. Respect and all that, ya know.
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Most companies have an email address specifically for media inquiries. So i would assume they sent an email to the media relations email here: https://www.focus-home.com/company/
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What's about Dracula Origin and Dracula Love kills?
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The Steam versions should be safe as those were published by Frogwares themselves. Crimes and Punishments is as well though so there must be something else involved there.
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Let me ask something. If I buy the game (crimes and punishments) at steam now, before the deadline, the Frogware's guys also doesn't see any penny of there, right? Sorry if is a stupid question 😇
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It's not a stupid question, you care about the devs which is nice.
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That really depends on the details of the contract between Frogwares and Focus.
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You're right. To buy or not to buy, that's the question now 🙈
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If you leave a decision up to that..Why not get it from a grey reseller site then?
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Curiosly, for currency convertion and other things (like buyer insurance), the best price was just 80 cents under the steam price, from a guy on Kinguin with 20 strikes for duplicated keys on this year. At that point, buy without protection doesn't look like a great idea
Probably I gonna buy it on steam in some minutes (you know, the flesh is weak, and the Holmes's games are so pretty,(at point that gonna be the first game what I buy digitally at full price on my life)), saying a pray about the Frogwares lawyers can sucefully kicking the Focus's asses and recover the game and receive the money from this sell.
Maybe I should burn in hell for this choose 😐
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Holding indie game developer's games hostage for life, and basically saying "once you've published a game with us you better only publish with us, forever, or else."
Wouldn't that fall under some kind of extortion? That sounds like it has to be illegal in some way.
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It's kinda like a gym here in Ireland that my sister signed up to when she was 18. Then she got a job and moved, so never used the gym. She tried to cancel her subscription stating that she never used the gym. They were like "the facilities are here for you to use, and if you read the small print, the contract goes on indefinitely." My mum got involved and they bullied her too, so she went into her solicitor and he sent them a legal letter. Contract got cancelled. lol. Few months later, we saw on the news that the people over that chain of gyms were up in court on charges of bullying customers etc.
These guys sound very similar to that. "If you read the small print, the contract goes on indefinitely." No contract is indefinite. It can have a minimum term, but that's it. What they are doing to indie devs is illegal as far as I know.
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as far as I know, I know nothing. I've certainly not seen in that article any indication that the contract is indefinite or that the publisher is holding the games hostage. All I see is ONE developer griping after the contract came to an end
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Yeah, it would be very weird for a publisher as big as Focus to pull some crap like that. Surely they would know better.
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I can think of several possible reasons for what happened, most of which would be legit. Without more knowledge I don't want to guess. But automatically assuming "evil publisher" on the vague say-so of a single article invoking a single developer with nothing concrete, that's just wrong
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Yeah, but you're misjudging me. I am not one of the people who has blacklisted all of their games. I was only giving an example of how that behaviour is seriously illegal. If it didn't happen and the devs are lying... then that will come to light. These things always do.
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but you're not giving an example, you're taking a wild guess. You've made assumptions that aren't in the article (admittedly, based on the OP). Nowhere in the article is it stated or implied that contracts need to go on forever.
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Yes, I was responding to the OP, and the message I responded to here. :P
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in regards to the steam side of this disagreement.
i think it was Road Redemption, if not then i wont be able to link it for proof, but some game kept the steam id while switching publisher.
so, i don't see why Focus couldn't deal with it that way, instead of delisting the ip.
or at least as i understood.
because they also go on, to say Focus is holding the ip ransom and not transfering it back.
which i really didn't expect it from Focus, but it's believable enough, as it's been done by more successful publishers, microsoft, EA, Ubi
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I'm not saying it isn't possible, I don't know the details. But it wouldn't surprise me if a publisher takes the stance that they created all the marketing, and if the developer wants to leave, they can't take the marketing with them.
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i dont see how. theyre the publisher. they dont HAVE to publish a game if they dont want to. It also cuts both ways.. if they remove a game from availability, then they arent making any money from it either... it wont be handled as crudely as i imagine most people here imagine.
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/318020/Act_of_Aggression__Reboot_Edition/
This one also gone.
Don't know related or not. I found out on early of September when Focus do weekend sales and I can't find this game at there then only found out it had pull out from store.
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I am confused, the Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments store page says that the developer and publisher is Frogwares... like in case of The Testament of Sherlock Holmes.
Is it really going to be delisted?
Edit: Oh, second post is already mentioning it. X)
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Whatever. I used to like Focus before, but since then they've turned into your typical greedy publisher with unreasonable pricing policies and crappy attitude.
Frogwares also deserved some karmic punishment perhaps, for messing up with their Sherlock games and filling them with modern memes and references to current world politics and whatnot.
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That's a hard punishment for just a couple of memes...I mean we're talking about their livelihood here. Those games paid people's salaries.
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It's crazy how fast people judge and how hard they always want to punish, sometimes for the smallest things. I don't feel they understand that actual people and families are behind those game studios they want to see go bankrupt. It's always easy to say things like that as long as you're not affected yourself, I guess.
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First of all, sorry for late reply. Been out of the city.
Second, what's really crazy is how often people misinterpret other people's words.
I'm 35, I couldn't get a job from 23 till 29 so I know what it's like, thank you very much. Not wishing anyone to go bankrupt and very much doubt Frogwares will go bankrupt over this situation. They're just attention whoring as usual.
What I said only meant that if you go as far as to screw up your own (supposedly serious) games just for the sake of stupid memes or to convey some sort of political message which has no place in said games, then you're not taking your job seriously. If they did honest work I would pity them. Since they don't, I simply don't care.
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Not appealing to a random individuals tastes is not something that incurs karmic debt, my friend ;P
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Putting portraits of Putin in a game set in Victorian England is not a matter of individual taste, my friend. It's a plain idiocy.
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It can ruin immersion or suspension of disbelief, but then again so too does the Wilhelm Scream. Mishandling such attempts at humour are in themselves the punishment, as it would reflect negatively on the product and its reviews/sales. If they still do well despite it, then they found their mark despite how awful they may be. And again, not something that 'karmic punishment' really factors into. I mean if your post was more tongue in cheek then I wouldn't have said anything but it was brought up in conjunction with Focus shafting them, so... yeah.
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I see a lot of people in this thread jumping on the hate bandwagon, but there's very little information in this article.
If the contract between the publisher and the developer ended, then the publisher can't sell the developer's game anymore. Nothing about that should be controversial.
The only thing I see is that Focus won't hand over the store page for games it previously published. I don't see "Any indie dev studio they work with will be forced to stay contracted to them forever" or anything like that. I don't know how much work goes into creating the steam page, or how much work goes into transferring that back to the developer, or if there's any costs involved, and I haven't seen any contract that delineates who'd be responsible for that. Nor do I know what's standard or common in the industry.
All I see is one developer complaining about the publisher at the end of the contract. I have no idea if their gripes are legitimate, nor if it's part of a bigger problem.
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Sigh, felt forced to get all missing possible games even though my wallet said i shouldn't, only Journey to the center of the earth (not the other one with the same name) and Dracula Origin i couldn't find anymore.
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You mean this one?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/11050/Dracula_Origin/ and https://store.steampowered.com/app/474240/Journey_to_the_Center_of_the_Earth/. They are very much still there. Found in seconds. =)
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I mean cheaper offcourse.. i am crazy to pay something for it but not full prices and definitely not those games.
Everything been bundled in the past, i even gave Dracula away when i thought i would never use steam.
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Ah, okay. I thought you meant they had gone hehe. But... if they're telling the truth about focus, those games were published by Frogware, so why would they get removed. =)
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Even Crime and Punishment will. https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/nUSsLoS
Even so, better safe then sorry (to atleast get all the others i could).
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extorting its contracted indie game studios
Sounds like they're Pulling A Bethesda™.
..but, seriously, this (if legit) sounds pretty damn similar to the infamous past practices of Bethesda and Activision.
[Though those two were actually a lot more forceful and directly sabotaging in their actions, eventually actively stealing certain IPs from developers that they deliberately ran under; It may just be that Focus lacked the same kind of access that those publishers had, and thus was forced to limit their dubious actions.]
It's telling that after all this time no protections have yet arisen to limit the exploitative control publishers can have over developers.
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Was waiting for Sherlock Holmes Crimes & Punishments to disappear (since I don't own it and can't find it at a decent price) but one day after the announced deadline, it's still there...
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And consumers are ones suffering for this. As the publisher owned games will get no further patches or support...
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So apparently Focus Home Interactive, the publisher of games like GreedFall, A Plague Tale, etc. has just implemented a new policy; Any indie dev studio they work with will be forced to stay contracted to them forever or else they will not only remove their games from digital store fronts but also hold the game IDs hostage so that the developers cannot re-list them (at least not without using a new ID and thus no longer being on anyones wishlist). The developer Frogwares is the first ones to be harmed by this so far. More info here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU4EzXbjiio&t=0s
https://www.pcgamer.com/frogwares-claims-focus-home-interactive-is-delisting-its-games-without-approval/
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