The Sinking City delisted from Steam again after legal battle

Frogware's DMCA claim against Nacon has drowned the game again.

To say that the developers over at Frogwares have a less than stellar relationship with certain publishers would be this year's biggest understatement. Back in 2019, several Sherlock Holmes games were delisted from stores after Frogwares accused publisher Focus Home Interactive of both delisting them and refusing to return the code. Then, one year later, the French developers' The Sinking City suffered the same fate when Nacon was accused of not paying the developers as much as they agreed on and a few other things. This situation seemed to be on its way to be resolved when the game returned earlier this year, but something was clearly up because Frogwares said this version was pirated by Nacon and urged us not to purchase it on Steam. These claims have lead us to the latest update.

The Sinking City has been delisted yet again from Steam, and the storefront-owners over at Valve give the following statement in an email when asked for a reason:

"The Sinking City has been in dispute in French courts for a while. An interim decision last fall appeared to give Nacon the right to distribute the game on Steam while the litigation proceeded. However, today we received a DMCA take-down notice for the version that Nacon recently shipped, so we have responded to that notice."

It would seem that January's ruling wasn't as clear as it first appeared, so The Sinking City's destiny is apparently still in the legal system's hands. I've asked Nacon for a comment and will keep you updated if they respond.

Those of you who want to play the decent game can still do so through other storefronts on both PC and consoles.