Can we all give a golf clap to Frogware. If they didn't have the foresight to maintain ownership of their IPs and know how to back it up legally. They could have very easily found themselves screwed over by not one but two publishers.
Seriously. It's like seeing an artist make sure their contract is good in the music industry- it's not the norm, and it can make life so much easier. Bravo to them!
I'm still furious how Focus Home Interactive treated the employees' plight when they worked on Aeon Must Die under the horrible conditions of lazy, narcissistic and scumbag executives.
@@MrQwertysystem Well, their habit of suing publishing partners doesn't negatively affect the quality of their games. As a gamer, I tend to root with the entity that will offer me the highest quality game. I do not see any better reason to root for Frogwares over Nacon.
The fact that you can straight up pirate a game, submit it to a digital store and have it made available for purchase just because your company looks legit is crazy.
Such a shame that it's been caught up in legal battles because this is actually a good game. Not the greatest, but I feel like it caught more flak than it deserved. It's different and a cool take on the Cthulhu mythos and the idea of an open world game in that kind of universe is pretty cool. It's the kind of game that could become great if they did a sequel that streamlined a couple of things.
I used to watch playthroughs of it around the time it launched. I love the cthulu mythos and I can tell that this game could've been special if they didn't get screwed over. I still might eventually play it.
@@SolidSnake240 It's worth checking out, especially now it's pretty low in price, at least if you can get your hands on a physical copy. I don't love the side missions, but the main story is good and engaging.
This is the only third person game I've ever played that made me feel motion sick. I thought there was a bunch of potential, but the stuff they did with the camera, PoV and visuals made me feel ill within 20 minutes, so you can gather I never got very far.
@@commasama1098 Some Steam reviews claim it's still the version Nacon tried to bypass over Frogwares involvement, which if true, that's very disappointing. Fortunately, I looked up the Switch version (which was actually published by Frogwares themselves) and that was on sale (as of when writing this), so I decided to even go as far as buying the "Deluxe Edition" and give it a whirl. To be honest, from what little I played so far, the Switch version is surprisingly pretty well optimized. It's not fantastic performance, but it's definitely playable. I'm quite interested in seeing where the story goes myself.
@@SoulWarrior265 thanks! I bought the steam one a long long while ago THEN found out about the problem, so I've kinda refused to play it. I'm glad Switch has the real one, I'll grab it.
I remember seeing that statement back when it came out. Started hearing about so much BS about BBI/Nacon after that and honestly wanted them to just vanish into obscurity, because there was no way I was gonna believe they had any developer's best interests at heart ever again. I honestly hope there still is a lawsuit somewhere and BBI/Nacon breaks because of it.
@@bobafett4265 personally i would have loved to see them fined and put in jail. these days with the megacorporations, even 100 million dollar fines are little more than a slap on the wrist.
Same. I felt it had the same sort of charm as Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. Also, while the actual city might have been devoid of many places you could actively visit, there was still a ton of stuff to do. Ending(s) is kind of meh but I felt it was the sort of game more about the stuff leading up to it than the ending.
Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One isn't episodic, it's a full game. They didn't pick the best name, eh? Great video! I loved this wee game. Very atmospheric and unique.
Yeah maybe not the best Name at all. It’s named that way because you play a young Sherlock Holmes that solves its first cases. He also haven’t met Dr. Watson yet. But I can’t really find a better name for it.
It may not as polished that well but I respect how much love and care was put into it you can tell that and getting that taken away from you from some shady ass company is gotta suck
Jesus christ, this is horrific. This is, I think, the most blatantly criminal video game licensing issues I have ever heard of. *Note: that I have heard of.* I'm sure there's worse. But god, I don't want to hear about those. All I want is for Nacon to get what is fucking coming to them and for Frogwares to be able to move past this and keep making games.
The game had no right, being as good as it was, but the developer brought such love, reverence, and passion, that’s it’s still a hearty recommendation from me.
This situation is what makes me so nervous about Nacon acquiring Creature Studios, who are making the excellent skateboarding sim Session. I’m so worried it’s going to end up in limbo or stupid reasons like this.
They also acquired the studio Spiders who have made some low budget ambitious RPGs, most recently Greedfall. Their games have been getting better and better with each one, especially for a small studio working on a expansive RPGs with limited budget. I really hope Nacon doesn't derail them, because I quite liked Greedfall and have considered them a studio to watch going forward.
Man, this was...an absolute mess to comprehend I'm sure, but I'm glad that Frogwares came out of it with a W and that their game is actually receiving some positive feedback now that it got a second lease on life after escaping its first.
@@robertcastanpn288 EA reminds me of whenever in a cowboy movie, you say the name of someone a town doesn’t like, every person in the room spits on the floor in disgust. EA really does make me want to do that, rn, and BBI/Nacon has joined the ranks.
It is definitely one of my all time favorite eurojank double A game. I have been playing frogware games for years and I am super hyped for the new Sherlock Holmes open world game
I know it'll never happen, but I still want to see a "What Happened...?" on Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. A game that killed the company that developed it, and managed to earn a sequel which ultimately became vaporware.
As someone who enjoys Lovecraftian games, I was so looking forward to this game. It has issues but it's still delivered what I was seeking, and hearing all the drama behind the scenes. My heart goes out to the devs. Instead of being able to focus on JUST Improving the game, they had to deal with all this!!
Honestly pretty disappointing to see some comments here shitting on the game, when most of the problems were about the dispute between Frogware and BBE/Nacon...the game isn't bad. It's not perfect by any means, but I liked it. Though, I'm a sucker for anything Lovecraft, especially if tries it's best to be faithful to the source material (minus the glorification of racism); so me liking the game probably doesn't say much, because it's likely that I like anything Mythos-related as long as it's somewhat competent.
Facts. I feel weird sometimes for enjoying the Lovecraft mythos as much as I do considering that the man would hate me based on my skin color and the not so subtle racism in his stories lol
My favorite part about The Sinking City is that the town is the Lovecraft equivalent of "Everyone is Here". Literally every major god barring Grandpa Azathoth.
usually when a company oddly changes names, its a method to avoid taxes as they have t obe reprocessed under the new name.... in some cases this can set back tax collection from a company by years
The review scores are justified but if you look past the glitches and bad combat, the core of the game (investigating mythos events) is fantastic. Really underappreciated gem.
Regardless of cancellation or final products, as an illustrator myself I gotta say the box art for all of those Cthulhu games was _gorgeous._ Every single one of them would have caught my eye and made me want to investigate further.
bought this game on switch last month. instantly became one of my favorites I've played this year but it could be so much better, can't wait to play more from these guys, really glad to hear they came out on top of all this
What does that even mean. You forget a thousand things every day because of how busy life is. Do you remember every game you played 24/7? Of course not.
It feels like Nacon didn’t read all of the contract they made with Frogware regarding the copyright and just refused to accept they got bamboozled, for lack of a better word.
I actually first found out about this game because of Steph Sterling's channel. I got curious and bought it, and I am so glad I did. I love this game so much. I love the eerie atmosphere, the quirky characters, and all of the dumb jankiness. I was really bummed out when I heard about what was going on between Frogwares and Nacon. It's not a perfect game by any means, but you can just feel the heart and passion that Frogwares put into this project. That they got treated like that was just unbelievable. I'm so glad they were able to get the rights back. This game and this studio deserve more love.
As jim Sterling put it so well..... this whole thing feels like you're stuck at a dinner with a couple just going at each other's throat who should probably see a marriage councilor
As someone who had followed almost every stage of the legal battle I am very happy to find out Frogwares pulled through and even made a better version of Sinking City.
This game is definitely jank, but I still love it. The setting and mood were absolutely fantastic. I got every achievement, and highly enjoyed playing it
@@Tardisntimbits Jesus those flowerpots...though to be fair the Noclip documentary really is like a 3 hour long 'wha happun' since the devs themselves go into detail of all the fuck ups and the process needed to save it (The ungodly crunch).
I had never heard of Frogwares before this, but I have mad respect for them after hearing this story. They basically just said “Scam us out of our own game? Yeah, nah”
Crimes and Punishments is still one of my favorite detective games. Amazing experience. Didn’t like Sinking City really, but maybe I ought to give it another go.
I'm shocked the story of the Sinking City was as messy as it was with the whole Legal BS involving a Sketchy Publishing Company and a Licensing mess, boy this was a different but welcomed episode of the series, hope we get more oddball stories for What Happened in the future. 😄
I just hope some big film game studio/publisher like EA Games or Activision don't claim the rights to the Cthulhu mythos as it's in the public domain as Lovecraft intended
I'm so glad Frogwares has come through this alright. Crimes & Punishment and Devil's Daughter are solid detective games (the logic/deduction web thing is such a good system) and I'm excited about Chapter One. Also, I'm such a dork that I recognized the thumbnails of every game that got vanished from the store around 9:40 and some of them were the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective FMV games, which are not made by Frogwares, and I have entirely too much knowledge about PC Sherlock Holmes games and it is completely useless.
I'm just going to add that if you enjoy the Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is worth checking out. It's a boardgame that basically works like a choose your own adventure game. There's four different boxes with ten cases each and it works well solo or with others. Three of the cases from The Thames Murders aka the yellow box are available as old FMV games on Steam.
Very underrated game. The atmosphere, characters and cases to investigate are really good. People trashed it a little too hard for its bugs, imo. Also bugs can be fixed and quicksave exists.
For those unaware... Nacon is publishing Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. It was supposed to release this year, and there hasn't been a single second of gameplay.
You'd think that if Nacon believes they owned the IP, they would have tried to seek legal action against the Switch version. Shows that they knew their case was already shaky and false.
Big Ben is the name of the bell in the clocktower, just to be clear. But hey, I just wanted to leave a comment since I know it's kind of out of your wheelhouse talking about these legal ker-fuffles but it was actually fascinating. So, yeah, thanks for making all of these videos such a great watch.
I have so much respect for The Sinking City. Yes, it was buggy, yes it played like absolute ass & could've done without the combat. It was still clearly made with passion for the source material, and I enjoyed my time with it very much. Which is why this story still saddens me so much; I've been following this clusterfuck since Frogwares' infamous blogpost and I just hate seeing a studio like this be forced into copyright lawsuit bullshit. This is the video games industry at its very worst, with publishers breaking TOS they themselves agreed to & assuming it'll just work out for them since they're the bigger company. I'm glad to learn that it didn't turn out like that in this case, and am even happier to see Frogwares just soldiering on without interference now, they deserve their independence.
Can we all give a golf clap to Frogware. If they didn't have the foresight to maintain ownership of their IPs and know how to back it up legally. They could have very easily found themselves screwed over by not one but two publishers.
Seriously. It's like seeing an artist make sure their contract is good in the music industry- it's not the norm, and it can make life so much easier. Bravo to them!
Definitely 👏👏👏
And there are cases of this shit happening.
I'm still furious how Focus Home Interactive treated the employees' plight when they worked on Aeon Must Die under the horrible conditions of lazy, narcissistic and scumbag executives.
@@MrQwertysystem Well, their habit of suing publishing partners doesn't negatively affect the quality of their games. As a gamer, I tend to root with the entity that will offer me the highest quality game. I do not see any better reason to root for Frogwares over Nacon.
The fact that you can straight up pirate a game, submit it to a digital store and have it made available for purchase just because your company looks legit is crazy.
Frogware v. Nacon: Dawn of Cthulhu.
Clever~
@GenerationWest What the... I saw you in the comments section for another vid already today😲
@@DetectorCliche Yeah, he's like male puberty, popping up all over the place you'd least expect.
Iä Iä Nacon Ftaghn
@@Rammy_Latin 1111111q11q1111111qqq1qqqqqq
"something much more evil... LAWSUITS & LAWYERS!" true
We've got to have moneyyyyyyy
Congrats on your Olympic medal
@@erickopplin9623 thanks bro only took me a few thousand years
oh no, not lawyers! anything but LAWYERS!
@@jnerdsblog lawyers are like insurance, you hope you’d never need them, but when you? Not having them is…
Such a shame that it's been caught up in legal battles because this is actually a good game. Not the greatest, but I feel like it caught more flak than it deserved. It's different and a cool take on the Cthulhu mythos and the idea of an open world game in that kind of universe is pretty cool. It's the kind of game that could become great if they did a sequel that streamlined a couple of things.
I used to watch playthroughs of it around the time it launched. I love the cthulu mythos and I can tell that this game could've been special if they didn't get screwed over. I still might eventually play it.
@@SolidSnake240 It's worth checking out, especially now it's pretty low in price, at least if you can get your hands on a physical copy. I don't love the side missions, but the main story is good and engaging.
It;'s mostly a good gang, but the core conceit of the final choice was flawed as a part of the universe.
Flawed, but still great. I’ll replay it sometime after getting a PS5
This is the only third person game I've ever played that made me feel motion sick. I thought there was a bunch of potential, but the stuff they did with the camera, PoV and visuals made me feel ill within 20 minutes, so you can gather I never got very far.
Frogware: “I made this”
Big Ben: “You made this?”
Frogware: “Yes”
…
Big Ben: “I made this”
Frogware: “I made this”
Big Ben: “You made this?”
Frogware: “Yes”
…
Nacon: “I made this”
Fixed that for you there.
I never thought that an entire company could pull a Karen.
After hearing all this, now I wanna buy this game not b/c I'm interested, but to garner support for Frogwares. They don't deserve this.
Same (although I'm actually kinda interested in it) but I can't tell if the version on steam is still the pirated one?
@@commasama1098 Some Steam reviews claim it's still the version Nacon tried to bypass over Frogwares involvement, which if true, that's very disappointing. Fortunately, I looked up the Switch version (which was actually published by Frogwares themselves) and that was on sale (as of when writing this), so I decided to even go as far as buying the "Deluxe Edition" and give it a whirl.
To be honest, from what little I played so far, the Switch version is surprisingly pretty well optimized. It's not fantastic performance, but it's definitely playable. I'm quite interested in seeing where the story goes myself.
@@SoulWarrior265 thanks! I bought the steam one a long long while ago THEN found out about the problem, so I've kinda refused to play it. I'm glad Switch has the real one, I'll grab it.
I played it, It's an OK game, But the detective stuff really gets frustrating tbh
It actually is a really REALLY good game
I remember seeing that statement back when it came out. Started hearing about so much BS about BBI/Nacon after that and honestly wanted them to just vanish into obscurity, because there was no way I was gonna believe they had any developer's best interests at heart ever again. I honestly hope there still is a lawsuit somewhere and BBI/Nacon breaks because of it.
I do agree with that Bigben/Nacon need to be taught a lesson and with their behavior it will happen.
@@bobafett4265 personally i would have loved to see them fined and put in jail. these days with the megacorporations, even 100 million dollar fines are little more than a slap on the wrist.
Casual reminder, they are publishing the new Vampire the Masquerade game in 2022, so make sure to buy used!
@@Shinbu1128 i thought that was put on indefinite hiatus. I haven't been following it though.
@@Lazrael32 That's Bloodlines 2 which is published by Paradox. Pretty sure the person is talking about Swansong published by Nacon.
I honestly really enjoyed this game. The jank actually helped the game feel creepier hahaha
Same. I felt it had the same sort of charm as Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. Also, while the actual city might have been devoid of many places you could actively visit, there was still a ton of stuff to do. Ending(s) is kind of meh but I felt it was the sort of game more about the stuff leading up to it than the ending.
I enjoyed it, had a Deadly Premonition feel which I liked
It reminded me of Vampyr a lot. Not the best, but still interesting
This really got my blood boiling! I’ve never heard of Frogware or literally any of their games but now I’m going to check all of them out!
Yeah the testament of sherlock holmes is pretty good
I still have to buy Crimes and Punishments, only have Testament and Devil's Daughter, they're fantastic games, if you're a Sherlock fan
@@GeovaneSanciniSR _Crimes and Punishments_ is pretty good, one of the chapters has a fun little _Tomb Raider_ tribute too.
Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One isn't episodic, it's a full game. They didn't pick the best name, eh? Great video! I loved this wee game. Very atmospheric and unique.
Yeah maybe not the best Name at all. It’s named that way because you play a young Sherlock Holmes that solves its first cases. He also haven’t met Dr. Watson yet.
But I can’t really find a better name for it.
Well, now I'm actually interested in it. I thought for sure they were going with the episodic approach due to the name. What a dumb title lol
@Sebastian Klein Sherlock Holmes: origins?
Sherlock Holmes: The Upstart Detective.
Even Sherlock Holmes: The First Chapter would be a better name. It's almost exactly the same, but doesn't seem quite like Part 1 of X.
I do appreciate this game a lot. Its a mess, but its a beautiful Lovecraftian nightmare of a mess.
It may not as polished that well but I respect how much love and care was put into it you can tell that and getting that taken away from you from some shady ass company is gotta suck
I almost just want to buy it because of what the dev went through. Looks like it could be fun, despite the messy nature.
I heard about the legal issues surrounding this game but I had no idea it was this wild. Like damn BBI/Nacon are shady AF.
agreed.
Frogware games are always pretty jank but also full of character and soul.
Janky but fun is the best description of frogware games. Not the best, certainly nothing revolutionary but a charm that I can appreciate.
Jesus christ, this is horrific. This is, I think, the most blatantly criminal video game licensing issues I have ever heard of. *Note: that I have heard of.* I'm sure there's worse. But god, I don't want to hear about those.
All I want is for Nacon to get what is fucking coming to them and for Frogwares to be able to move past this and keep making games.
The game had no right, being as good as it was, but the developer brought such love, reverence, and passion, that’s it’s still a hearty recommendation from me.
Oh yeah. Frogware does good work. I love their Sherlock Holmes games.
Just bought it and i dont regret it at all. Really enjoying it so far.
Nacon - Give us the source code, or else.
Frogwares - Or else what?
Nacon - Uh, well, *piracy happened*
Does this count as forbidden, mind-bending, insanity-inducing knowledge?
Yes, just like the name of H.P. Lovecraft's cat.
@@ShortT-RexLikeArms Or Obama’s last name
@@cthulhubecausewhynot1182
Anyone with half a brains knows that Obama is his last name.
His first name is President.
This situation is what makes me so nervous about Nacon acquiring Creature Studios, who are making the excellent skateboarding sim Session. I’m so worried it’s going to end up in limbo or stupid reasons like this.
They also acquired the studio Spiders who have made some low budget ambitious RPGs, most recently Greedfall. Their games have been getting better and better with each one, especially for a small studio working on a expansive RPGs with limited budget. I really hope Nacon doesn't derail them, because I quite liked Greedfall and have considered them a studio to watch going forward.
Man, this was...an absolute mess to comprehend I'm sure, but I'm glad that Frogwares came out of it with a W and that their game is actually receiving some positive feedback now that it got a second lease on life after escaping its first.
“Something more sinister and evil, Lawsuits and Lawyers “
Lol okay that was pretty funny
Got round to seeing the video, I'm glad frogware pulled through, even more impressive is that they got valve to listen to a customer complaint!
This game was absolutely brilliant. Really enjoyed its moody atmosphere and quirky characters.
Call Of Cthulhu is good as well, at least imo.
*Update:* Frogwares became the sole publisher of The Sinking City on January 2, 2024, and as of this writing, a sequel has been announced!
I like how he used Giana Sisters DS music when talking about this topic. Off-topic, but that game was good fun!
Never have I seen a publisher try and sabotage a small studio's game, even though they don't own the IP. Nacon has some balls.
And I'm really hoping Frogware will have the chance to kick them
Um…you must be new to Wha Happun. That’s kind of a recurring trend.
Ea and take two pretty much do it all the time lmao
@@robertcastanpn288
EA reminds me of whenever in a cowboy movie, you say the name of someone a town doesn’t like, every person in the room spits on the floor in disgust. EA really does make me want to do that, rn, and BBI/Nacon has joined the ranks.
Like Lovecraft's writing, this WH left me terrified and confused.
We can all be proud of Frogware for sticking to their guns.
I might pick this game up next steam sale.
It is definitely one of my all time favorite eurojank double A game. I have been playing frogware games for years and I am super hyped for the new Sherlock Holmes open world game
The "PC" image shown at 5:16 is brilliant. Thank you for your attention to detail.
I know it'll never happen, but I still want to see a "What Happened...?" on Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. A game that killed the company that developed it, and managed to earn a sequel which ultimately became vaporware.
As someone who enjoys Lovecraftian games, I was so looking forward to this game. It has issues but it's still delivered what I was seeking, and hearing all the drama behind the scenes. My heart goes out to the devs. Instead of being able to focus on JUST Improving the game, they had to deal with all this!!
This, it was janky but it was still fun and considering the size of the game coming from an indie studio, eh I can forgive a little jank.
Honestly pretty disappointing to see some comments here shitting on the game, when most of the problems were about the dispute between Frogware and BBE/Nacon...the game isn't bad. It's not perfect by any means, but I liked it.
Though, I'm a sucker for anything Lovecraft, especially if tries it's best to be faithful to the source material (minus the glorification of racism); so me liking the game probably doesn't say much, because it's likely that I like anything Mythos-related as long as it's somewhat competent.
Facts. I feel weird sometimes for enjoying the Lovecraft mythos as much as I do considering that the man would hate me based on my skin color and the not so subtle racism in his stories lol
My favorite part about The Sinking City is that the town is the Lovecraft equivalent of "Everyone is Here". Literally every major god barring Grandpa Azathoth.
I hope we get a what happun on hello neighbor one day, especially with how much hype the project stirred up in the early days of development.
usually when a company oddly changes names, its a method to avoid taxes as they have t obe reprocessed under the new name.... in some cases this can set back tax collection from a company by years
I remember seeing the trailer and thinking "looks cool!" and then just nothing right afterwards. Forgot about it 'till now.
The review scores are justified but if you look past the glitches and bad combat, the core of the game (investigating mythos events) is fantastic. Really underappreciated gem.
Regardless of cancellation or final products, as an illustrator myself I gotta say the box art for all of those Cthulhu games was _gorgeous._ Every single one of them would have caught my eye and made me want to investigate further.
bought this game on switch last month. instantly became one of my favorites I've played this year but it could be so much better, can't wait to play more from these guys, really glad to hear they came out on top of all this
I legit forgot this game existed.
Took the words right out of my mouth!
What does that even mean. You forget a thousand things every day because of how busy life is. Do you remember every game you played 24/7? Of course not.
@@dominant2576 it means I forgot. Particularly because the hype died so fast. Really not much to debate
@eren v That’s such a weird nitpick.
The Epic Effect
I LOVE the Sinking City it's a fun, but Janky mess. However the crap that happened to Frogwares was Complete BS
Sherlock Holmes vs Lupin was not as good as Zenehatta VS LUPAN
Man now that I think about it. It would be cool to have a new Lupin the third game.
I would love to see Limbo of the Lost covered here one day.
Ooh, that'd be a good one to talk about but some of the details are a bit scarce but MandaloreGaming did a great video about it.
Maybe the ending of that potential video would be Matt and mandalore singing that last part
Glad to see things worked out in Frogwares's favor.
It feels like Nacon didn’t read all of the contract they made with Frogware regarding the copyright and just refused to accept they got bamboozled, for lack of a better word.
Glad to hear this had a happy ending for the developers, in spite of everything that went wrong involving the license.
I actually first found out about this game because of Steph Sterling's channel. I got curious and bought it, and I am so glad I did. I love this game so much. I love the eerie atmosphere, the quirky characters, and all of the dumb jankiness. I was really bummed out when I heard about what was going on between Frogwares and Nacon. It's not a perfect game by any means, but you can just feel the heart and passion that Frogwares put into this project. That they got treated like that was just unbelievable. I'm so glad they were able to get the rights back. This game and this studio deserve more love.
I actually enjoyed the game A LOT. The dispute thing is a bummer, though.
Matt using 5 seconds of a Black Tide song......weird how I didn't know I needed that today
As jim Sterling put it so well..... this whole thing feels like you're stuck at a dinner with a couple just going at each other's throat who should probably see a marriage councilor
"They did nothing wrong, they did everything correct." - DSP is CEO of Nacon?
The fact that you were loosing your sanity at the end of the video, is quite fitting for a Lovecraftian episode.
As someone who had followed almost every stage of the legal battle I am very happy to find out Frogwares pulled through and even made a better version of Sinking City.
I enjoyed the game. While it did leave a little to be desired it made me curious as to what else Frogwares can be capable of.
In the age of Digital storefronts video game publishers are now just an unnecessary plague rather than a asset. This story reconfirms this.
Frog got it back. update and dlc coming.
here after the 2nd game's announcement and finally devs getting back the rights
let's go
I never trusted BigBen, and now, i trust even less
If it wasn't for Zero Punctuation I legit wouldn't have recognized this game.
Same 😂
Yahtzee sacrifices his sanity for our sake.
It really didn't help this game to drop the Call of Cthulhu main title since that was how it was announced as at first
This game is definitely jank, but I still love it. The setting and mood were absolutely fantastic. I got every achievement, and highly enjoyed playing it
Frogwares sounds like a cool, brave studio doing their thing. We should support devs like that.
Nacon: (pirates game)
Frogwares: Congratulations. You played yourself.
Great episode! Keep them up Matt! ❤️♥️❤️♥️
If you're curious, 17:00 - "See you next time and thanks for watching."
Salute to Frogware for fighting for their IPs and standing up to crooked publishers.
One I believe is worth covering is for Final Fantasy XIV, especially with how it went from a failure to the biggest MMO on the market currently.
Honestly, they could probably make a Wha Happun episode for any Final Fantasy game released since 2006. They all have pretty wild development stories.
Hard agree. The legendary flowerpots must be discovered by Matt!
@@Tardisntimbits Jesus those flowerpots...though to be fair the Noclip documentary really is like a 3 hour long 'wha happun' since the devs themselves go into detail of all the fuck ups and the process needed to save it (The ungodly crunch).
I had never heard of Frogwares before this, but I have mad respect for them after hearing this story. They basically just said “Scam us out of our own game? Yeah, nah”
Loved this game even if quite flawed. Same with the Sherlock series (at least the ones with the older protagonists).
Crimes and Punishments is still one of my favorite detective games. Amazing experience. Didn’t like Sinking City really, but maybe I ought to give it another go.
Damn, glad to support Frogwares since the 7th gen.
Man, I remember watching this all happen, but I never knew it went down that far. Yeesh!
Also, nice touch on the Pumpkin Hill outro lol.
I was actually trying again at this game last night. Died again.
I appreciate you went out of your way to include your Honest Eyes on this matter Matt.
I... didn't even know that there was a sherlock Holmes franchise.
I assume it's popular, since these frogware guys were focused on it at some point.
Frogwares logo is Frog, Nacon logo is Snake. Snake eat Frog, but this frog will not surrender without fighting.
On the topic of Focus Entertainment, I get the feeling Aeon Must Die will be on the What Happened chopping block very soon
“Did nothing wrong; did everything correct” don’t think I didn’t catch your DSP reference Matthew
I'm shocked the story of the Sinking City was as messy as it was with the whole Legal BS involving a Sketchy Publishing Company and a Licensing mess, boy this was a different but welcomed episode of the series, hope we get more oddball stories for What Happened in the future. 😄
I just hope some big film game studio/publisher like EA Games or Activision don't claim the rights to the Cthulhu mythos as it's in the public domain as Lovecraft intended
And then just a few days ago the official trailer got taken down. Yup, something certainly happened.
I like that DSP reference @ 13:52 lol, thanks Matt.
I'm so glad Frogwares has come through this alright. Crimes & Punishment and Devil's Daughter are solid detective games (the logic/deduction web thing is such a good system) and I'm excited about Chapter One.
Also, I'm such a dork that I recognized the thumbnails of every game that got vanished from the store around 9:40 and some of them were the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective FMV games, which are not made by Frogwares, and I have entirely too much knowledge about PC Sherlock Holmes games and it is completely useless.
I'm just going to add that if you enjoy the Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is worth checking out. It's a boardgame that basically works like a choose your own adventure game. There's four different boxes with ten cases each and it works well solo or with others. Three of the cases from The Thames Murders aka the yellow box are available as old FMV games on Steam.
For a moment I actually forgot that The Sinking City and Call of Cthulhu were two different games. These guys really got screwed over
WERE GETTING A SEQUAL BOYS
Shady Company changes it's name multiple times... I wonder why?!
Very underrated game. The atmosphere, characters and cases to investigate are really good. People trashed it a little too hard for its bugs, imo.
Also bugs can be fixed and quicksave exists.
'Gets to the release of the game' - Well that was a short episode
'See's this is only halfway through - OH IT'S ONE OF THOSE ONES!
For those unaware... Nacon is publishing Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. It was supposed to release this year, and there hasn't been a single second of gameplay.
It felt like a Flophouse Files video. Excellent investigación, Matt
Imagine a situation where publishers act so poorly that EPIC actually comes out looking like good guys.
Well, imagine no more!
Update 2024 : Frogwares is now "the sole publisher" of the 2019 Lovecraft-inspired adventure. A nee version of the game comes out tomorrow.
You'd think that if Nacon believes they owned the IP, they would have tried to seek legal action against the Switch version. Shows that they knew their case was already shaky and false.
Big Ben is the name of the bell in the clocktower, just to be clear. But hey, I just wanted to leave a comment since I know it's kind of out of your wheelhouse talking about these legal ker-fuffles but it was actually fascinating. So, yeah, thanks for making all of these videos such a great watch.
When the development of a game is more Lovecraftian than the game it is based around. Holy shit.
I have so much respect for The Sinking City.
Yes, it was buggy, yes it played like absolute ass & could've done without the combat. It was still clearly made with passion for the source material, and I enjoyed my time with it very much.
Which is why this story still saddens me so much; I've been following this clusterfuck since Frogwares' infamous blogpost and I just hate seeing a studio like this be forced into copyright lawsuit bullshit. This is the video games industry at its very worst, with publishers breaking TOS they themselves agreed to & assuming it'll just work out for them since they're the bigger company.
I'm glad to learn that it didn't turn out like that in this case, and am even happier to see Frogwares just soldiering on without interference now, they deserve their independence.
They should have called it Pro Call of Cthulhu Manager
There's a neat Queen reference in the background of 4:11
I remember hearing about this game and seeing clips, than everything going quiet. Was wondering rather it released or not
Frogwares won full ownership over the ip