Indie developer suggests players “don’t buy” his game after relationship with publisher “dissolved”

12 December, 2022

The Outbound Ghos

The developer of The Outbound Ghost has suggested that players don’t buy his game, after he fell out with his publisher over its alleged dissatisfactory performance on the Switch.

Conrad Grindheim, who is lead developer on the adventure RPG, posted a video on YouTube claiming that his relationship with his publisher Digerati has “dissolved”. He added that he wants Digerati to return the publishing rights to him.

Stating that the indie title is “not up to the quality standards of the games that I create and that you expect of me”, he asked fans to avoid the game and said that he was taking legal action to protect “our company, our name, our reputation, and consumer’s rights”.

“The past few weeks have been incredibly stressful due to many factors, but the main reason is that my relationship with the game’s publisher has been dissolved,” Grindheim said (via PC Gamer). “My priority will always be to do right by fans of the game.”

Digerati initially issued a statement in early December acknowledging issues with the Switch version of the game, adding that “hopefully [a patch] won’t be much longer”.

Days later, Digerati wrote on Twitter that is was “aware for performance issues” on Switch and said that a patch would come “in the coming week”.

The Outbound Ghost said on Twitter that it was “incredibly disappointed” with its performance on console. Those working for the official Twitter account encouraged players to play the game on Steam as “the Steam version is the one that I have approved”.

Digerati published another statement on Twitter after that, saying that “in addition to the day one patch that was available for the PlayStation versions, an additional update went live on Tuesday, 6th December”.

“The patch for the Switch version is still in review with Nintendo, but is expected within the next seven days. We’ll provide further information on this as soon as we can,” it continued, inviting users still “experiencing issues” to get in touch.

“Digerati has released over 50 different titles on console, and launches with situations such as this are the exception,” it concluded. “We remain firmly committed to making further improvements to The Outbound Ghost as quickly as we can. Thanks for your patience.”

Grindheim then posted a response to that statement on Thursday (December 8), which led to Digerati to respond with a video of its own.

Sarah Alfieri, owner of Digerati and widow of the company’s recently deceased founder, Nick, said in the video: “I want to clarify some of the recent activity surrounding The Outbound Ghost. We’ve remained largely silent over the last few days as we’ve been blindsided by the sudden negativity from Conrad, the game’s developer.

“Until literally hours before the console launch, we had enjoyed a cooperative and mutually pleasant working relationship with Conrad and we saw no indication of any dissatisfaction on his part.”

Her statement added that the publisher provided Grindheim with “substantial funds” to develop his “passion project” and in exchange “he licensed the full rights to us to distribute the game”.

“Unfortunately, he has now wrongly told us he is terminating our contract, even going so far as attempting to use the tragic and sudden death of my husband as grounds for termination.”

Alfieri went on to claim that “Conrad has unlawfully tampered with the Steam page and has attempted to take down the console versions as well. This isn’t fair to us, and it isn’t fair to you”. Grindheim has not responded publicly to these allegations.

Alfieri continued: “Our goal is to support The Outbound Ghost and has always been to support our developers. We are actively trying to make improvements and release patches, and have been met with repeated attempts to sabotage our efforts and sully our name.

“Despite all of this, we still hope to come to a resolution and work together to continue supporting The Outbound Ghost with its lead developer by our side, and we want to provide you, the consumer, with the best possible version of the game that you deserve.”

The Outbound Ghost has now been removed from sale on Steam.

There’s was no further update from either party at the time of writing. In a statement to PC Gamer Grindheim reiterated that he was looking into “appropriate legal actions to resolve this situation and to protect the game”.

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