UK publisher allegedly hid money from Indonesian studio

Mojiken Games, an Indonesian game studio, accuses UK publisher PQube Games of hiding money obtained from a diversity grant in their name.

Mojiken Studios and Toge Productions, developers of the upcoming A Space for the Unbound, announced that they were terminating their partnership with PQube Games, a UK Publisher due to alleged thievery.

The studios, in a joint statement, posted on Twitter the reasons they were ending their partnership with PQube. According to Mojiken/Toge, PQube applied for grant money in August 2020 at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This grant money came from a “diversity fund”, and was applied for using Mojiken/Toge’s “position and heritage” as Indonesian developers.

Instead of allocating those funds towards Mojiken/Toge as was proper, PQube allegedly withheld the funds and the information about the funds from the studios, and used it as “leverage for their own commercial gain.”

“Rather than paying the grant money to us, PQube Games hid the facts about the grant’s aware and added it as a recoupable minimum guarantee, and then used it to negotiate the increase of their revenue share.”

We have important news to share with you. pic.twitter.com/O5od8fCp4y

— A Space for the Unbound 💫 gamescom 2022! (@ASFTUgame) August 24, 2022

The studios state that they only discovered the truth of the matter in March of this year. “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.”

To end the statement, the studios note that PQube Games is refusing to hand over publishing control for their game on console platforms. Mojiken/Toge have stated that they will delay the release to ensure that the game “is consistent with our and our community’s values.”

When reached for comment, PQube had this to say: “We have honoured 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. Toge Productions have sought for some time to unilaterally enforce unreasonable revised terms to our agreement and it is disappointing that, as a result of not achieving that and despite PQube’s significant efforts to accommodate this, they have sought to deal with the matter in this way. We will respond through the appropriate channels”.

We have reached out to Mojiken Studios and Toge Productions for additional comments and clarification, but no reply was received at the time of publication.

PQube is a publisher devoted to indie games, with titles such as the upcoming Potion Permit and previously released titles such as Tormented Souls and Nexomon. PQube also owns an Asia-centric branch, with anime-styled games like Gal Gun, White Day and Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle.

Written by Junior Miyai on behalf of GLHF.