According to a statement by the studio, old saves won’t be compatible with the new version of the game due to technical reasons. The Steam version of the game does allow players to play an older version of The Sinking City, however. This older version will only be available until February 28.

The announcement comes on the heels of a lengthy legal battle between Frogwares and former publisher of the PC version, Nacon. Going through a fair bit of problems during the lawsuit, The Sinking City was pulled from some platforms back in 2020. Nacon, however, made the game available in 2021, with Frogwares urging players to not purchase it, referring to it as a pirated version.

The Sinking City is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. For more details on the game, which was originally released back in 2020, check out our review.

Folks, we got some big news!

Frogwares is now the sole publisher of The Sinking City on all platforms! We're happy to finally put this whole thing behind us, and we look forward to sharing more news about the future of the franchise very soon.

Please read our full statement pic.twitter.com/IxWblqbYmP

— The Sinking City 2 (@thesinkingcity) January 2, 2024

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

Kojima’s swansong Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is a game that actually uses its open-world setting to great effect. Its setting of Afghanistan houses a complex web of interconnecting systems that create a highly dynamic gameplay loop – requiring players to alter strategies on the fly. It’s also filled with a ton of neat little details to signify the outcome of your killings. If you get sloppy and do a lot of killing in your mission, your Demon Points increase which causes the Horn on Venom Snake to grow along with blood smears on his face. After a certain point, the horn will grow out completely and you turn into Demon Snake.

Frogwares has released an Xbox Series X/S version of The Sinking City on the Microsoft Store.  The Standard Edition is $49.99, while the Deluxe Edition is priced at $64.99. As with the PS5 version of the game, the Xbox Series X/S version does not feature a free upgrade from the Xbox One version.

This is due to ongoing disputes over ownership of the IP between Frogwares and Nacon, the game’s original publisher. Frogwares requested that The Sinking City be delisted from storefronts last year while the problem was sorted out.

The Sinking City returned to storefronts earlier this year after French courts ruled in favor of Nacon. The game was originally released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on June 19th, 2020. It was ported to the Switch in September and PS5 in February. The original release was a solid title overall, with a fairly compelling story, complex choices, and some genuine scares, though it’s clear it was a budget title and its combat doesn’t feel great.

2019’s The Sinking City was an interesting game that took developer Frogwares’ detective pedigree and mixed it with Lovecraftian cosmic horror. The game also was at the heart of an unfortunate and unexpected legal issue between Frogwares and publisher Nacon that saw the game pulled from digital storefronts, though it has since returned. Now the game is coming to next gen.

As announced by Frogwares, they are releasing a PS5 version of the game tomorrow. This version of the game will include native 4k, 60 FPS, much quicker load times and DualSense features. Unfortunately, due to the legal dispute between Nacon (who is listed as the publisher on the PS4 edition still), Frogwares says they are unable to allow free upgrades since they are doing the PS5 release on their own.

The Sinking City is available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch and PC and will release on PS5 on February 19th. You can read our review of the game through here.

Last year saw the release of Frogwares’ latest detective game, the Lovecraftian-inspired The Sinking City. The game was said to be successful, and overall it was a solid title. However, it ended up at the center of a dispute between the developer and publisher/licensee Nacon (known at that time as Big Ben Interactive). It was a messy affair that you can read more about through here, and ended up resulting in the game being pulled from several digital storefronts, namely PSN, Xbox Live, Steam and the Epic Games Store. It seems now it’s being prepped to return.

Nacon issued a statement on their official website, saying that while the lawsuit is still ongoing, French courts have issued their first enforceable ruling. They have apparently ruled in favor of Nacon and that Frogwares did terminate their contract unlawfully. While they make clear that this is not the full conclusion, it has resulted in the ability to return the game to those storefronts.

“The Court ruled that Frogwares had terminated the contract in a “manifestly unlawful” manner and, as a result, ordered, as a “precautionary measure, the continuation of the contract (…) until its term or until a decision is made on the breach of this contract and ordered Frogwares Ireland to refrain from any action on the breach of this contract and ordered Frogwares Ireland to refrain from any action that impedes this continuation (…).

“Confirmed in its expectations by this decision and regardless of the time needed to resolve this dispute definitively, NACON is continuing its action in defense of its rights and has proceeded with the execution of this court decision by asking platforms and sites to put The Sinking City game back online so that no one is held hostage to this situation. It is however specified that insofar as some of the game’s online stakes depend on the goodwill of Frogwares to perform, their absence cannot be attributed to NACON.”

The Sinking City was still available digitally on the Nintendo eShop and other PC digital fronts like Origin due to Frogwares being the sole publisher there. The game is now once again available to buy and download on the Xbox Store, with plans to return to PSN and Steam at a later date. The game was also removed from the Epic Games Store, and while presumably it will return there as well, there is no mention of it in Nacon’s statement above. We’ll keep you updated on the story when more information comes.

It was over a year ago now that developer Frogwares brought up a detective story based loosely on the works of H.P. Lovecraft with The Sinking City. The game combined elements of the studio’s previous Sherlock Holmes titles with the cosmic dread of the author’s style. The game was quite the success for the company, but it seems unfortunately, it’s become caught in something of a dispute.

If you aren’t familiar, the game was often listed as having Big Ben Interactive (now renamed to Nacon) as the publisher, but they were actually something closer to a licensee for the game and played the role more of a distributor than a traditional publisher. The game has now disappeared from a lot of major storefronts due to what Frogwares is alleging is a breaching of contract. They released a 4-page letter on the removal, which you can see from their official Twitter below.

There’s a lot here, but the biggest allegations come to Nacon seemingly causing confusion about them having ownership of the IP as opposed to Frogwares . There’s a few very odd stories, such as Nacon demanding the source code for The Sinking City for another unrelated project. It’s all well worth reading, but the most important part is here, and thankfully there are still ways to obtain the game:

“However, while there’s no need for BBI/Nacon to formally acknowledge the termination, the former licensee has created a perception that it is they who still own The Sinking City, and so various partners and platforms are sometimes confused, overly cautious or preemptively delist the game themselves while dealing with our requests to return full control of the game to Frogwares.

“Given these breaches, ongoing hurdles and an unwillingness to cooperate, Frogwares last resort was to request the removal of The Sinking City from any remaining stores to at least halt any further sales going to BBI/Nacon.

“Faced with this situation, we have decided to explain to you why you cannot find The Sinking City on certain platforms today.

“To all the players that wish to buy The Sinking City – we are more than willing to have the game be present everywhere and we will inform you as we reappear on more platforms on our social channels.”

It’s a strange situation, and hopefully one that can be resolved so the game can be returned to major storefronts soon. In the meantime, you can still purchase The Sinking City from the links above, and it seems in some regions the game has not been delisted as of writing this.

https://twitter.com/Frogwares/status/1298245160921374721?s=20

Last year saw the release of The Sinking City. The game came from Frogwares, a company known for their detective games based on Shelock Holmes. The Sinking City took a lot from those titles, but with a more Lovecraft-fare as you discovered the dark, cosmic secrets of a small town. It seems it was a hit for the developer, and they’re going to keep in that same wheelhouse for their next title.

In an interview with Wccftech, Communication Manager Sergey Oganesyan talked in lengths about the game. When asked about its success, he said they were happy with the game’s performance, though couldn’t give exact numbers at this time. He did say it was selling better than their previous Sherlock Holmes games and the deal with Epic Games for the PC version had been helpful.

“Okay, for those who don’t know, we released The Sinking City on PC, Xbox One, PS4 and the Nintendo Switch, and while we cannot reveal the exact numbers, I can say the game was definitely a success for our studio. It is selling better than our previous Sherlock Holmes titles did during the same period of time and continues to do well.

“I’m not sure I can disclose the contents of the commercial agreement [with Epic Games]. But like we have said before, we wouldn’t have agreed to the terms if it weren’t crucial for our studio. This deal with Epic Games allowed our studio to continue doing what we love to do – niche detective games but also prepare for the future. Will we see a sales boost for The Sinking City on Steam? It’s up to the players to decide!”

When it came to the company’s future, Oganesyan was coy about what was next for Frogwares, but did confirm that the game will be familiar. Whether it’ll be a sequel to The Sinking City, another Sherlock Holmes or something else entirely isn’t ready to be unveiled just yet.

“I can confirm we are working on something, but we are not ready to reveal what it is. What I can tell you is that fans best know us for our detective games, and this new game will fit the Frogwares profile – a story-focused detective adventure with minimum hand-holding. But is it going to be Sherlock, The Sinking City 2 or a new IP – that I, unfortunately, cannot say just yet.”

The Sinking City is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch and PC. You can check out our review of the game through here.

The Sinking City brought developer Frogwares’ knack for detective games to some good ‘ole fashioned Lovecraft lore and dread of the great unknown. The game released earlier this year for other platforms, which you can see how we felt about it through here, and now it’s time for the madness to come to the Nintendo Switch, and it’s coming much sooner than expected.

As announced by the publisher and developer, the game will hit the console/handheld hybrid in just over a week’s time. You can check out some of the exclusive features it’ll have through here. It will also get a Deluxe Edition that will include the “Worshipers of the Necronomicon” DLC.

The Sinking City is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. The Switch version will release on September 12th. To get a good look at some footage of the game running on the hardware, we got you covered through here.

Frogwares’ The Sinking City brought Lovecraftian dread to us in its mixture of detective gameplay and cosmic horror based narrative. The game released to fairly solid reviews, making it a good midrange title to get into. It’s ramping up to be on Nintendo’s system pretty soon, and we got our first look at it today.

The developer released the first gameplay footage of the game running on the Switch, which you can see below. There’s some obvious cutbacks, which you would come to expect considering the hardware gap, but it’s nothing too startlingly and seems to run pretty well. There’s even a few before and after shots in the video for direct comparison, and it’s not too shabby at all. We also know the Switch version will get several new features specific to that hardware.

The Sinking City is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. No word yet on when the Switch version will hit, but we should know soon.

The Sinking City released earlier in the year to some solid response. The title features a detective who finds himself in a strange town where mysterious flooding has unearthed a lot of horrifying events. It was announced at E3 to be coming to the Switch, and while we haven’t seen anything from it yet, the developers have detailed what makes this version unique.

In a lengthy interview with Nintendo Life, Frogwares Community Manager Sergey Oganesyan talked about the game’s Switch port. He broke down how the developers had gone about porting the title to Nintendo’s system, and how they preserved the content without any major cuts. When asked whether there were any unique features to the Switch version, he said that the port will take advantage of both the system’s gyro and touchscreen capabilities.

“The game will feature the option of using gyroscope when aiming with weapons, and control the camera when using the boat. Additionally, you can use the touch screen functionality in the menu, mind palace and to pick the dialogue options in conversations.”

The Sinking City is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The Switch version is due out sometime this Fall. You can check out our review of the game through here.