The drama in The Sinking City has taken another bizarre turn. Developer Frogwares took to Twitter to warn gamers that the recently restored, removed, and restored again version released on Steam was not actually produced by the company, and therefore should not be purchased.

First, a recap: the 1920s detective game "The Sinking City," set in a submerged fishing town built on caves crawling with Lovecraftian horrors, was removed from most 2020s following a dispute between Frogwares and publisher Nacon It was removed from the digital storefront; Frogwares claimed that Nacon failed to fund development and submit accurate revenue reports as promised, while Nacon said Frogwares was merely making wild claims to discredit the publisher.

In January 2021, a preliminary ruling in the matter found that Frogwares had terminated its contract with Nacon in a "patently illegal" manner and ordered restoration of the contract terms. Accordingly, The Sinking City was returned to Steam and other storefronts, but very soon disappeared again without explanation, although it remained (and remains) available on the Microsoft Store; it is also available on Origin, but has never actually been removed from this store; and it has never been removed from the Microsoft Store.

Well, here it is.

The current listing for Sinking City on Steam is different from the one that was removed, and the old URL is no longer valid. It's not immediately clear what the difference is, but Steam users have mostly negative comments, saying it's an older version of the game, with no DLC, achievements, or cloud saves.

The build was supposedly posted by Nacon, but Frogwares also seems to have access to the Steam page: two different updates posted today simultaneously tout the game's return to Steam and warn fans not to buy it. A strange situation, to say the least.

I have reached out to both Frogwares and Nacon for comment and will update if I hear back, but given that the game only returned to Steam late Friday (Ukraine for Frogwares, France for Nacon), it may take a while ...