An ongoing dispute between developer Corecell and publisher PQube resulted in AeternoBlade II being delisted from the European Nintendo Switch eShop and PlayStation Store late last week. Corecell initially alleged in a tweet on September 1st that PQube had not provided a “minimum guaranteed” payment to the studio for sales of the game, and further, had not fully returned publishing rights to the title to Corecell.
As part of their attempt to regain control of the title, Corecell requested that Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony remove the game from their digital stores until publishing rights are sorted. As of this writing, PQube’s release of AeternoBlade II remains available only on Xbox One. On other platforms Corecell has released the game themselves as AeternoBlade II: Director’s Rewind except on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in Europe where no version of the game is currently available to buy.
After news spread of the team’s statement, PQube provided a response to NintendoLife on September 2nd. In the lengthy statement, PQube claims that Corecell had been unresponsive to several contractual agreements, ending that “we remain open to support Corecell in any way possible”.
Although this will likely be an ongoing issue for a while, it’s good to see that Corecell controls the title on most platforms including Steam where they published the game themselves in 2020. Thanks to everyone who pointed out the news, hopefully we can get a page up soon and update it as a relisting once publishing rights are sorted out.