Indie dev files DMCA takedown against his own game as dispute with publisher continues

pcgamer.com:

In December, Conrad Grindheim of Conradical Games defaced the Steam page for his latest release(opens in new tab), The Outbound Ghost, and asked people not to buy it on other platforms. The unusual move came as a result of a dispute between the studio and publisher Digerati. Conradical accused Digerati of mishandling the console ports of the game and putting the Steam version on sale without approval, and demanded that it relinquish the rights to the game; Digerati filed a lawsuit against Conradical, accusing it of attempting to violate its contract.

The Steam page was restored(opens in new tab) in relatively short order, but now it's gone again, this time due to a DMCA takedown request filed by Conradical. In a new video, Grindheim said he took the step after efforts to resolve the dispute amicably failed.

Grindheim reiterated his complaints about The Outbound Ghost's console ports in the video, and defended his past criticism of Digerati. «The publisher misled us to believe that the version that was going to release was in accordance with the agreed quality standards,» Grindheim said. «We trusted them, being our publisher, but we never should have.

»If we had not warned players about the state of the console versions, my reputation in this industry would have been ruined forever by no fault of my own."

Grindheim also accused Digerati of not paying «a single dollar in royalties,» even though he said the publisher has acknowledged owing the studio a specific amount, and claimed that it has been under-reporting revenues earned by The Outbound Ghost through a practice known as «sub-licensing,» typically used when a publisher wants to release a physical edition of a game or put it out in tightly regulated regions like