Outbound Ghost devs DMCA strike their own game and accuse publisher of withholding royalties

rockpapershotgun.com:

Late last year, turn-based indie RPG The Outbound Ghost was delisted from Steam after a statement from lead dev Conrad Grindheim claimed his relationship with publisher Digerati had “dissolved.” Soon after, Digerati filed a lawsuit against developer Conradical over a breach of contract and “several false defamatory” statements. When reporting on the original news, CJ thought the messy situation could get messier, and he was right. Grindheim has now DMCA’d his own game on console storefronts and accused Digerati of withholding royalties.

Grindheim’s original Twitter statement centred on the poor quality of console ports and accused Digerati of “profiting from the situation.” In response, Digerati’s owner Sarah Alfieri posted a video on Twitter claiming that Grindheim had “unlawfully tampered” with the game’s Steam page, failing to perform his obligations of making the game a success. Grindheim says the lawsuit is simply an attempt to “silence me and others.”

In his most recent public video, Grindheim shared details of their publishing agreement, saying that copyright owner Conradical was responsible for developing the PC version, while Digerati would “meet the developer’s reasonable quality standards” for the console ports. Grindheim argues that Digerati breached that contract by releasing “poor” console versions that either omitted promised localisation options, or featured them with game-breaking bugs. The publisher allegedly “misled” Conradical by releasing ports that didn’t comply with the “agreed quality standards.”

We have DMCA'd our own indie game. Context in this thread.Please RT