Following up after the surprising news that their titles from publisher Focus Home Interactive were being removed from console and PC storefronts, Frogwares has issued official confirmation of the delistings. The studio posted a press release on October 4th to confirm that 9 out of their 10 store listings had been removed.
“The outcome is pretty bleak,” states Wael Amr, CEO of Frogwares, “and we are now fighting an uphill battle, trying to resubmit our games back on their stores where possible. As we previously said, the process is going to take several months, but there’s hope and we will continue to push on.”
That 10th title is Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments which Frogwares was able to regain control of, keeping it available on Steam, and quickly releasing it on GOG.com. As an added bonus, Frogwares has put many of their titles on sale on GOG.com through October 11th and those who buy Crimes & Punishments will also get a free copy of their 2010 title, Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of The Baskervilles. What’s more, Frogwares has prepared a free memorial artbook to commemorate their long history with Sherlock Holmes and for fans to enjoy while they continue working to bring their games back to storefronts.
“We are forever grateful for the sheer amount of public and industry-wide support we got, and we truly appreciate everyone who added their voice to the issue, Amr continues in the press release. “To show our gratitude we put together a digital booklet for Sherlock Holmes games and have released it for free to everyone. A big thank you to all the community that did actually reach out to us to try help once we brought this to light.”
While PC players still have plenty of Frogwares titles to choose from, the landscape is now completely barren on consoles. When we last posted, only a couple of titles remained on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 but now they’ve all disappeared. A few are still available on physical media however.
I’ll begin working on adding the titles to the site and hope that a relisting comes sooner than later.