Online shooter Boundary shuts down as dev and publisher clash over rights

Last week, publisher Skystone Games announced its Early Access shooter Boundary is going offline at the end of June. But what first sounded like a standard tale of an online game going down is actually more thornier than expected.

In the announcement for the game’s closure, Skystone claimed it’d give publishing rights to developer Surgical Scalpels. It then went on to claim the studio failed to update and improve the game, in turn leading to “growing concerns” from players.

But as PCGamer spotted, Surgical Scalpels has a different side of the story. Per the developer’s translated post, Skystone allegedly (and abruptly) decided to stop supporting Boundary, a move it called “unreasonable and unfair to [us] and the players.”

“We immediately negotiated with SkyStone after receiving the notice,” it added, “but unfortunately, we failed to change SkyStone’s unilateral decision to stop operating Boundary.”

Sometimes, a publisher will give the developer their game rights without much friction. But in cases where feuds do break out, it can often concern games at risk of being delisted or going offline, if that’s not a consequence of the feud to begin with.

At time of writing, it’s Surgical Scalpels that’s aiming to get the game’s rights back in the hopes of a future relaunch. It’s also working to get the money from Skystone it claims to be owed, though it stopped short of saying how much and how long it’s gone without being paid.

While this dispute has resulted in Boundary being “suspended,” Surgical Scalpels assured the game “will not stop forever. […] We will never give up.”