Many have likely forgotten about indie brawler Aeon Must Die! Revealed during Sony's State of Play stream last August, the game was quickly embroiled in controversy when a number of former developers claimed publisher Focus Home Interactive had committed IP theft. Not only that, but former developer Limestone Games had reportedly forced its employees to crunch to an unreasonable degree and didn't pay them for their work. You can read about the previous allegations here, but the story is far from over.
This past week, Focus Home Interactive uploaded a new trailer to YouTube that reannounced Aeon Must Die! to the world. As you can likely surmise, there is no mention of last year's allegations anywhere from Focus. Due to that lack of clarification, the ex-developers have taken to Twitter to voice their concerns over the resurrection of this title.
Tweeting from the Mishura Games account, which is a new studio formed by many of the old Aeon Must Die! team, Mishura writes, "We the former developers of Aeon Must Die! are confused and baffled by the announcement of Aeon Must Die! No legal matters pertaining to the situation were solved and even more arose in the aftermath."
Continuing further, the account states that none of the previous IP issues have been solved and that the trademark for Aeon Must Die! does not exist. They claim no publisher investigation has taken place, the work done for the trailer remains unpaid, and that most of the animations for Aeon Must Die! are still unpaid. Essentially, nothing has changed from last year's allegations.
Not wishing to let this matter get out of hand, Focus Home Interactive issued a statement to VGC that explained its side of the story. "Focus implemented the social audit clause of the Limestone contract upon receipt of the employees’ resignation letter on June 22, 2020," reads the statement. "Focus carried out with the assistance of two law firms, one international and one Estonian (both independent), a social and legal audit which did not confirm any of the accusations leveled against the management of Limestone."
Focus then states that the Estonian branch of the International Association of Video Game Developers conducted its own investigation into the reports and was unable to verify the claims that the former Limestone devs made. Due to the results of those combined investigations, Focus and Limestone mutually decided to extend the development of Aeon Must Die! so that the current team would have the proper time to release a quality game.
"The release date is now scheduled for 2021. In addition, Focus has granted an additional budget to ensure the proper development of the project. While our teams have more than 20 years of experience in production follow-up, we at Focus, do not replace the creative teams."
The story doesn't end there, however. Eurogamer received a comment from Limestone co-founder and former CCO Aleksei Nehoroshkin about the incident from last year. Nehoroshkin still owns 17 percent of Limestone and has stated he has endured a protracted battle with existing management over ownership of the studio. He also claims that Focus hasn't reached out in over a year.
"Focus did not directly push to crunch, of course, no one from Focus Interactive ever said 'crunch!' explains Nehoroshkin. "But the deadlines decided upon by LSG management and Focus were not realistic as stated a year ago." He then states that the Estonian branch of the IGDA never actually conducted its investigation and the two companies lost contact just before last year's leak of allegations.