Conrad Grindheim is an independent developer and founder of the Conradical Games studio, creators of a PC game called Outbound Ghost, who surprised players in December 2022 by asking players not to buy the title, due to a dispute with the publishing house. On the occasion and through a video that he uploaded to YouTube, Grindheim accused the publisher Digerati Games of developing versions of the game for consoles without his approval, which he indicated were adapted in such a bad way that they were full of bugs and performance problems.
This is why the indie developer, annoyed by the low-quality ports for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, started a battle against Digerati demanding the return of the distribution rights of Outbound Ghost, removing the Steam page from the site. game, a version that was originally created by him, after the “friendly” conversations did not come to fruition.
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In a new video, the creator indicates that Digerati “misled us into believing that the version to be released met agreed quality standards,” adding that “we trusted them, being our publisher, but we never should have.”
“If we hadn’t warned gamers about the state of the console versions, my reputation in this industry would have been forever ruined through no fault of my own,” says Grindheim.
In addition, in the video he says that he has not received “a single dollar in royalties”, ensuring that the publisher acknowledged that he owed the studio a specific amount. stating that “there’s money that (Digerati Games) received without our knowledge, before the whole transfer thing happened, and we’re entitled to our share.” Because of all this, he has issued copyright infringement requests “to platform holders” as he believes is “the best course of action.”
“Basically, we are showing the platform holders that we own the copyright to the game and the publisher has no right to distribute the game. They are committing copyright infringement by keeping the page active,” the dev says on the video.
On the other hand, and as indicated in PC Gamer, Digerati acknowledged that the console ports of The Outbound Ghost have problems, accusing that Grindheim has not wanted to work with them to identify and fix the errors, also criticizing the developer for launching a Kickstarter for a new game, without completing the rewards of the sponsors who donated for the creation of The Outbound Ghost, on the platform.
