London-based publishing company PQube is under fire once more following a public statement from Thai developers Corecell. They claim that the publisher did not pay minimum guarantees outlined in their publishing agreement for their game AeternoBlade 2.
The embattled publishers were thrust into the public spotlight last week by Coffee Talk developer Toge Productions. Toge are an Indonesian outfit and they allege that PQube used this fact to obtain a diversity grant intended to help underrepresented game developers but instead of using the money for its intended purpose, they instead hid the fact they received the grant and used it for commercial gain. According to Toge, PQube is refusing to hand back publishing control of A Space For The Unbound, delaying the release as a result.
Now, a similar statement has come from another Asian developer. The Bangkok-based Corecell has released a statement on Twitter with more allegations levelled against PQube, publishers of their game AeternoBlade 2. The aforementioned game was released in 2019 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
“It has been tough for us for the past three years. We have struggled to recover since we signed a publishing deal with PQube. But now it’s time we came out with the truth. Hopefully, this will help other indie game developers to avoid what has happened to us and inform our fans about our situation.” the statement opened.
According to Corecell, PQube placed several minimum guarantees within their publishing agreement which they failed to pay out. They attempted to resolve this issue with PQube but have been unable to do so, eventually leading to the termination of the publishing agreement. Despite this, Corecell says PQube has not yet returned publishing control to them and continues to take all the revenue from the sales of the game.
Furthermore, Corecell has claimed that PQube offered to return publishing control to them if the matter were kept secret. They’ve asked platforms to remove the game from digital stores but only Nintendo and Sony have complied so far.
Corecell concluded the statement by thanking fans and promising they’ll be returning to provide new content for AeternoBlade 2 once the matter had been resolved. It would appear that this ongoing situation has taken the full attention of the studio.
DualShockers has contacted PQube for comment.
