Dev Delays New Game Due To Feeling “Manipulated” By Its Publisher

Toge Productions and Mojiken announced that A Space for the Unbound has been indefinitely delayed due to “feeling manipulated” by the game’s western console publisher, PQube.

Back in August 2020, PQube secured a diversity fund from a “well-known console platform” to help fund underrepresented developers, as the studio is based in Indonesia. However, Toge claims that PQube did not grant those funds directly to the developer but instead withheld them for their own financial and commercial gain.

In a statement on Twitter, Toge Productions said, “Rather than paying the grant money to us, PQube Games hid the facts about the grant’s award and added it as a recoupable minimum guarantee, and then used it to negotiate the increase of their revenue share. We have only uncovered the true amount of these funds and their intended purposes in March 2022.”

The statement continued, saying, “We are absolutely heartbroken that a party we worked with would do this and a project we have worked on for seven years has been taken advantage of in such a way. Since the uncovering of this issue, we clearly cannot trust PQube Games nor continue to work together for the release of A Space for the Unbound as PQube Games has fallen considerably short not only of reasonable decency but also of their obligations to us due to these predatory practices.”

PQube issued a statement to GamingonLinux, saying, “We have honored all obligations of our publishing agreement and have supported Toge Productions at every stage of product development throughout their delays and difficulties. This support has included offering significant further funding, over and above grant funding, to support development, porting, and marketing.”

PQube claims that Toge Productions has tried to enforce unreasonable revisions to their term agreements and the publisher has tried to accommodate. PQube also expressed disappointment that Toge made a public statement about this, but the publisher insists that it will respond to these allegations through appropriate channels.

Toge Productions has since terminated its own contract with PQube. According to Toge, however, PQube is not handing over the publishing rights for the console version of A Space for the Unbound, so the game is being put on hold until arrangements are made.

A Space for the Unbound was announced in 2020 and is a sci-fi slice-of-life adventure game taking place in 1990s Indonesia.