PQube Alleges Corecell

PQube has issued a response to the allegations laid against them by Thai-based developer Corecell.

Yesterday, we reported on a story involving indie developer Corecell who allege that the publisher for their game AeternoBlade 2, PQube, refused to pay them the minimum payment guarantees contained within the pair’s publishing agreement. Furthermore, Corecell also claims that PQube is refusing to relinquish publishing control of the game. 

We reached out to PQube for comment prior to the publishing of our article and they have since provided us with a response to Corecell’s allegations. PQube opened the statement with “We enjoyed working with Corecell on our first project together and Corecell were very happy with the success of this. We were pleased to work again with Corecell on Aeternoblade 2 and, despite delays and quality issues we endeavoured to release the game in October 2019 for them as they requested.”

The statement continued, “At our post launch meeting in January 2020 Corecell acknowledged significant product quality issues and agreed to provide critical fixes in order to make the game commercially viable. Unfortunately, these fixes never materialised and Corecell remained unresponsive. PQube remained prepared to pay the full guarantee for the game, despite the very poor reviews and sales, and to publish the PC version in line with PQube’s option in the agreement. Corecell agreed in March 2020 to provide the PC version to PQube but then proceeded to list and then release the PC version itself without further discussion with PQube.”

Following on from this, PQube claims they attempted to restore publishing rights to Corecell but the proposals “were not acknowledged” by the Thai studio. PQube states, “Nevertheless, despite all of the challenges and the lack of communication from Corecell, PQube released its rights to the console versions back to Corecell well before the end of the agreement term.  We remain open to support Corecell in any way possible.”

PQube ended its response by stating the publisher always tries to solve challenges with developers “in a fair and reasonable way” and remains “fully committed to providing the best possible service and success for all of our partners.” Corecell hasn’t made any additional statements regarding the situation.