AeternoBlade II developer Corecell has accused publisher PQube of failing to pay the full minimum guarantee of the game’s publishing contract. He’s the second developer in the past week to grab the attention of a publisher.
“PQube has been publishing AeternoBlade II for Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Xbox One in Europe since October 2019 and has agreed to pay a minimum guarantee under our publishing agreement,” said Corecell. In a statement on Twitter (below). “However, PQube only paid a small portion of the minimum guaranteed amount for the signing milestones at the time we sent the game in, and never paid the rest of the milestones.”
Corecell claims that it tried to resolve the situation amicably with PQube, but neither of them came to a resolution. The developer apparently decided to terminate the publishing deal in September 2020. However, Corecell also refused to let PQube relinquish his AeternoBlade II publishing rights on consoles, arguing that it continues to sell on multiple platforms, thus refusing to release the game in Europe.
I have an important announcement.#indiedevmatter #Eterno Brady #gamedev #indiedev #indie games @xboxuk @PlayStation EU @NintendoEurope pic.twitter.com/AXwphGQYnL
— Core cell official (@AETERNOBLADE1) September 1, 2022
Corecell claims PQube offered to give back the console’s publishing rights, but only if the developers kept the situation a secret. “We knew something wasn’t right, but as a small independent developer we couldn’t afford the legal costs of filing a lawsuit in another country,” he says Corecell.
The developer has also contacted Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft about removing the AeternoBlade II from European digital stores, with only Nintendo and Sony responding.
Corecell has said it wants to work on the action-puzzle game by pushing patches and new content updates, but the developer has decided to move to another location to recover financially, as there is no revenue from the sale of the game. says he had to do additional work in Europe for the past three years.
IGN reached out to PQube for comment.
This is the second time PQube has been accused of a publishing deal in the last week. Toge Productions has released a statement regarding his exclusive publishing deal with PQube on A Space for the Unbound. Toge claims that PQube withheld funds provided by diversity grants from Indonesian developers and used them instead to take advantage of higher revenue sharing. It has since postponed the game indefinitely.
Last week, PQube told IGN that it fully honored its publishing contract and that Toge Productions tried to enforce unreasonable revision terms.
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey.
