Last month, Frogwares announced that, due to the end of a publishing agreement with Focus Home Interactive, several of its games had been delisted from Steam and other digital shops against its wishes. Fortunately, it's managed to rescue arguably its best game, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments. 

Ten games were at risk of vanishing because Focus was apparently unwilling to transfer the IDs over to Frogwares, which was necessary for them to take over the store pages. Without them, the developer will need to set up new pages, losing all of the reviews, Wishlists and data. 

Focus did not respond to the claims, but allegedly made a change in their policy, which Frogwares was neither aware of nor had encountered before. The new policy meant that Focus would not transfer title IDs to developers once their publishing agreement had come to an end. 

Unfortunately, nine of the ten games were delisted, but Crimes and Punishments was saved and remains on Steam. Frogwares has also released it on GOG, where you can net yourself a free copy of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of The Baskervilles along with it. You can also download a free booklet that shares memories, stories and art from different Sherlock games. 

Frogwares CEI Wael Amr said the studio is "forever grateful for the sheer amount of public and industry-side support" that it received. Because some of the games were for the last generation of consoles, they're unlikely to be listed again, and Amr says Frogwares is now fighting an "uphill battle" by trying to get new pages up for the games that can still be submitted. 

Frogwares, creators of The Sinking City and myriad Sherlock Holmes adventure games, is having some trouble with one of its former publishers, Focus Home Interactive. A license agreement between the pair has ended, and it looks like that means several of the studio's games will be removed from Steam and other stores, against Frogwares wishes. 

In a statement sent to PC Gamer and available on the official blog, Frogwares claims that its former publisher won't transfer title IDs to the studio, despite it being the IP owner. Focus can't continue to sell the games, however, so that means they'll vanish. Frogwares is making new store profiles, but that might not be possible in the case of older games on the previous generation of consoles. 

Last week, Focus told the developer that it would not be able to transfer content or title IDs because of a new policy that hat been put in place. Frogwares was apparently unaware of the policy and claims that it never appeared in any other contracts. 

Two Sherlock Holmes games and Magrunner: Dark Pulse have already been removed on PS3 and Xbox 360, though the PC versions are published by Frogwares already and are thus safe. Unfortunately, that doesn't include the excellent Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments, which is due to disappear from Steam and consoles on September 29.

"It is possible that it will be taken down at this date or earlier if nothing is done," says Frogwares. "The players will no longer be able to buy and play the game. We will also lose all our Wishlists on those store pages. As the creators and IP owners of all those games, we have no control and no say in this. The decision of Focus Home left us voiceless."

According to the developer, the new policy is a threat to other contracted developers and that it hasn't encountered anything like it before. I reached out to Focus Home Interactive to find out more details about the policy, but they've yet to respond. I'll update this story with more details if I hear back. 

Frogwares Studios have revealed their latest (and last) Sherlock Holmes game.

Here it is straight from the press release:

Featuring taut action and investigative work, Sherlock Holmes: The Devil s Daughter, the eighth and latest entry in the franchise, will push your abilities to the limit in a one-of-a-kind interactive experience.

There'll be five new cases and an 'expansive landscape' you can freely roam around. It's also promised that "for the first time in his storied career, Sherlock Holmes ruthless logic is overwhelmed by family stories, irresistible emotions and an occult revenge." Probably wishful thinking on my part, but I'm imagining the bit about 'irresistible emotions' as the thing Depression Quest did where options got greyed out as your decisions took effect.

Andy described the last entry, Crimes and Punishments, as 'the detective game L.A. Noire claimed to be' in his review. Typing this is making me ask myself why I haven't played it yet; I normally steer clear of adventure games but this definitely seems different to the usual fair. It featured going inside Sherlock's brain to solve crimes, which sounds like a neat way of making you feel as clever as the man himself. Playing as the greatest detective that ever lived while contending with adventure game logic is a pitfall that Frogwares have seemingly managed to avoid.

There's plenty of time to catch up: Sherlock Holmes: The Devil s Daughter is out in Spring 2016.

A sailor pinned to a wall with a whaling harpoon. A train mysteriously vanishing in the night. An archaeologist killed in a sauna that was locked from the inside. These are just a few of the mysteries you ll be investigating in Crimes and Punishments, a surprisingly brilliant detective adventure with, like its hero, a very silly name.

You are, naturally, Sherlock Holmes, the legendary Baker Street-dwelling detective who can suss out your entire life history with a glance. You might be wondering where the challenge lies in playing as the world s greatest sleuth, but that s what makes the game so great. You might have all the evidence, and it might all make sense, but you could still be wrong—and even pin the crime on the wrong person.

You can move freely around each case s setting—usually the streets of Victorian London—via a map. This is a stunning-looking game, and its environments are dizzyingly detailed. From Sherlock s home at Baker Street and foggy railway platforms in the English countryside to ornate Roman baths and the cells of Scotland Yard, everything is rich with handcrafted detail and drenched in atmosphere.

When you interrogate someone you can freeze time and study their body language and clothing, picking out clues to form questions. This shows off the insane detail of the character models and visualises Holmes s knack for figuring someone out by just looking at them—a neat visual trick borrowed from the recent BBC reboot.

Built in the Unreal engine, the game boasts ludicrously high-resolution textures and dense, cluttered levels, and as a result, weaker PCs might struggle to run it. The mouse and keyboard controls work fine, but I ended up playing with an Xbox controller. It s a slow-burning adventure that you ll want to sink into a chair and enjoy. Flipping between menus and moving around the world feels nicely intuitive with a gamepad—a result, no doubt, of it being simultaneously developed for PS4 and Xbox One.

It s no open world game. There are, sometimes annoyingly lengthy, loading breaks between areas. But being able to choose where and when you travel gives you a nice feeling of freedom. You ll visit the crime scene, gather evidence, then travel back to Baker Street to conduct science experiments, or to Scotland Yard to grill a suspect. Then you might visit a dingy pub or an archaeological dig site to chase more leads.

Once you ve compiled your evidence, you can enter the deduction space , which is like peering inside Holmes s amazing brain. Clues will usually offer two possible outcomes, and by selecting the right (or wrong) ones, they ll connect and give you a likely conclusion—and you ll have to decide if it s accurate or not. This gives you some genuine agency over each case, which detective games rarely offer. Interestingly, Holmes can choose to convict or absolve who he thinks the guilty party is.

Cases are self-contained, however, which means the choices you make won t carry over into later crimes. You aren t shaping a dynamic narrative here. It s all about the per-case satisfaction of piecing the evidence together and choosing the right suspect.

There are six in total, and each one can take a couple of hours, depending on how thorough you are. Crimes range from gruesome murders with links to the occult, to mysteries with seemingly paranormal leanings. Every case grabbed me from the very start, and I was always compelled to find the answers, which is surely the driving motivation of any good detective story.

When a case is done, you can reveal if you were wrong or not, but this spoils the fun and is only worth doing after you ve finished the game. You can go back and replay the last part of a case if you don t like a choice you ve made, but this feels like a bit of a cop-out and cheapens your efforts. It s better to live with your decisions, then look back at the end and see how right, or wrong, you were. The game also compares your solutions to other players if you re connected to the internet, Walking Dead-style.

Sherlock himself is the weak link. He isn t particularly likeable, and has a snooty self-regard that makes it difficult to empathise with him. Watson is always on hand, but is rarely useful, and feels more like an adoring fan than a right-hand man. The voice acting is decent, though, if not exactly the stuff of an HBO drama. There are some colourful, well-written supporting characters in the game s impressively large cast, but I would have liked to see a little more humanity from Holmes.

The puzzles are hit-and-miss, and it s telling that I skipped a lot of them. But it depends on what you want from the game. I was in it for the story, atmosphere, and crime-solving. But if you re into logic puzzles and brainteasers, you ll find an abundance of them here. It s just nice to have the choice. If you want Crimes and Punishments to be a puzzle game, it can be. If it s a story-led adventure game you re after, it can be that too. Or both!

This is the detective game L.A. Noire claimed to be. It doesn t have the inflated budget of Rockstar s game, but it makes up for its rough edges with quality detecting, compelling cases, beautiful world-building, and endearing gusto. Frogwares have been making Sherlock Holmes adventures for ten thousand years, but this is their best yet, and improves on its predecessors in almost every regard.