Update [Sat 18th Feb, 2023 00:55 GMT]: Publisher Digerati has provided an official statement to Nintendo Life, here it is in full:
It has come to our attention that Conrad Grindheim Borrell has recently posted a series of videos on Twitter containing several falsehoods about the ongoing dispute between Conradical and Digerati regarding The Outbound Ghost.
Digerati totally refutes Conrad’s statements. Conradical has been timely paid all royalties due to date. Digerati advised Conrad of such payment several hours before he posted the video on February 16th.
Conrad also accuses Digerati of not reporting certain royalty payments. This is another falsehood. We provided Conrad with all statements for each revenue source. We have offered a full audit of our books to Conradical’s legal team. They have not exercised this option, but Conrad continues to assert these false claims.
Conrad’s comments about the performance of the game is also noted. While the porting is the responsibility of the publisher, it goes without saying that publisher, porting team, and developer need to work together to iron out any bugs and so we can provide the game that everyone wants. We asked Conrad to help identify bugs or issues; however, Conrad has refused to work with us or communicate with Digerati on any channel.
In his videos Conrad also advertises another Kickstarter game when the promises made to the earlier Kickstarter backers of The Outbound Ghost have not yet been honored. Given that Conrad received all the money from the Kickstarter for The Outbound Ghost, Conrad has not attempted to work with Digerati to ensure such keys are given to the donors. Nonetheless, Conrad is getting money to start a different game without focusing on his prior funders. Conrad has not attempted to address his prior funders before starting his next venture.
Needless to say, we are very disappointed that Conrad continues to play out this dispute in the public arena. The matter is currently in the hands of our legal team, and we hope for a quick resolution on these matters.
- Digerati
Original story [Fri 17th Feb, 2023 12:45 GMT]: Conradical Games, the developer behind the Paper Mario-inspired RPG The Outbound Ghost, has escalated its legal battle with the game's console publisher, Digerati, by issuing a copyright strike on its own game via the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
In a video posted online via YouTube and Twitter (which you can view in full above), Conrad, the game's lead developer, explains why the studio has taken such drastic action. He states that the console publisher breached the agreed contract with Conradical by releasing a game supposedly full of bugs. In addition, he says the PC version of the game contains additional language support for Spanish, French, and German, but the Switch version of the game omits these entirely.
Conrad then goes on to state that Digerati is currently in the process of suing Conradical over the termination of their contract and defends statements he had previously made regarding the state of the console ports, stating that documents relating to the case are viewable to the public. He says that Digerati had failed to pay Conradical any royalties relating to sales of the game, explaining that Digerati provided Conradical with a figure that it had intended to pay, but failed to do so.
We'd recommend watching the full video for all of the information and context. Obviously, this is only one side of the story, but there are certainly some damning statements made here. We've reached out to Digerati for comment and we'll be sure to keep an eye on how this one plays out.