I’m not sure about publisher’s actions after they won the appeal in late 2020. Deluxe release certainly seems a bit aggressive, but without knowing the details of the ruling it’s hard for me to have a [layman’s] opinion on whether it was acceptable for them to do it.
My [non-lawyer’s] impression based on the older post is that, if true, the publisher acted maliciously enough in early 2020, and the fact that the court decided the appeal in publisher’s favour in the first place weirds me out a bit. It looks like emergency COVID regulations against contract termination came into play? They were designed to protect struggling small businesses, but in this case ended up favoring publisher’s booming enterprise (game sales appear to have done very, very well during the pandemic).
> the fact that the court decided the appeal in publisher’s favour in the first place weirds me out a bit. It looks like emergency COVID regulations against contract termination came into play?
Honestly, the surprising part is that Frogwares won in July. To terminate the contract, they asked Nacon to hand in justification for their costs of distribution and used Nacon's failure to deliver them in a month as justification. As that's not explicitely part of the contract - Frogwares can ask to audit Nacon and Nacon has to allow them to do so in a month, they can't ask to be delivered arbitrary documents - it was obvious that the termination would be deemed illegal.
I don't understand why Frogwares keep speaking of the emergency COVID regulations. They would have allowed the publisher to be late in its contractual obligations but Nacon wasn't. The appeal court explicitely stated they didn't apply as both Nacon and Frogwares kept their activities going as usual.
But to give you an idea of how badly Frogwares managed this lawsuit, the court went out its way to explicitely point they were throwing out parts of Frogwares'"mise en demeure" - the letter explicitely asking Nacon to submit documents - becuase it was to poorly and vaguely worded.
To be harsh, Frogwares are going at it like amateurs. At the end of the day, the heart of the issue is a disagreement regarding the amount they are owned. I don't understand why they didn't just pursue that angle and I don't think the amount of press they are giving the whole thing is going to help them much.
My [non-lawyer’s] impression based on the older post is that, if true, the publisher acted maliciously enough in early 2020, and the fact that the court decided the appeal in publisher’s favour in the first place weirds me out a bit. It looks like emergency COVID regulations against contract termination came into play? They were designed to protect struggling small businesses, but in this case ended up favoring publisher’s booming enterprise (game sales appear to have done very, very well during the pandemic).