Following the expiration of its publishing agreement with Focus Home Interactive, 9 of 10 Frogwares store listings were permanently removed.
The ordeal began on September 26th when the publishing agreement between Focus Home and Frogwares expired. 10 games on various digital storefronts were in danger of being removed, and unfortunately, 9 were. The lone survivor was the Steam store listing for Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments, and the team has since released the game on GOG.
“The outcome is pretty bleak, and we are now fighting an uphill battle, trying to resubmit our games back on their stores where possible. As we previously said, the process is going to take several months, but there’s hope and we will continue to push on,” Wael Amr, the CEO of Frogwares said in a statement. “We are forever grateful for the sheer amount of public and industry-wide support we got, and we truly appreciate everyone who added their voice to the issue. To show our gratitude we put together a digital booklet for Sherlock Holmes games and have released it for free to everyone. A big thank you to all the community that did actually reach out to us to try help once we brought this to light.”
Downloads of the free digital booklet highlighting memories, stories, and art throughout the various Sherlock games developed by the studio can be obtained via:
- GOG: Use the redeem code SWEETTHANKS at gog.com/redeem
- Steam: As a free DLC on the Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishment store page
- A direct download from Frogwares’ site
This was a very unfortunate circumstance for Frogwares, but we’re glad that they were able to salvage something from it. We wish them the best in their future endeavours.