Developer Pavel Zagrebelnyj came up with the strangely addictive off-road sim Spintires, in which you try to make it through the churned-up roads and forests of Russia in a variety of heavy-duty vehicles. It had beautifully done mud physics, and a few months back it was something of a cult hit.
Since then, despite being very popular on Steam, the game’s never really added a whole lot to that basic ‘drive a truck through some mud’ formula. Now Zagrebelnyj is accusing the UK publisher Oovee of taking the money and running, and preventing him from continuing development on the game.
This from the game’s Steam community page is a rather awkwardly translated version of Zagrebelnyj’s original post on the Russian website VK;
“Sad news … just seemed like the development process started, I almost finished my map and tools to develop mods (free upgrade) … as our Englishmen from oovee together with the loot disappeared. What infuriates even more is the fact that my posts are removed from the official English-language forum.”
“I don’t have permissions to upload the update to Steam. So now I’ll complete and release map editor, in the version it is now, and this will be end of Spintires.”
As you might imagine, it didn’t take Oovee long to issue a response to those accusations, and they flatly deny any wrongdoing or bad practice. Instead they blame Zagrebelnyj’s post on “communication issues”, and claim they have no intention of winding down development on the game.
“Pavel is bound by contract - as is Oovee,” The studio posted on its forum. “Oovee has paid Pavel all of what we are contracted to pay and is in no way being ‘double-crossed’. Although I am not at liberty to share contents of contracts and/or payment details - I would like to calm concerns of breach of contract - there have been no breaches of contract by either parties. We are hoping that development can soon pick up, with talks soon to be had about the expansion of the development team to allow for faster develoment and a larger development outlook.”
Bit of a mess all round, really. Zagrebelnyj suggested in his post that he was considering starting work on another similar title, but either way it seems likely that Spintires will continue on in some form or another. We’ll keep an eye out for further developments.
