[Note: this is cross-post from the Mini Motorways forum originally made on the 20th of April.]

Hey folks,

We’d like to talk about the recent events with the developer of All Quiet Roads and our own studio to give everyone an understanding of what’s happened and where things are at now.

Some time ago, the developer of All Quiet Roads reached out to us to propose a business collaboration between our two studios, and we declined as the offer wasn’t something we could take on. During this communication, the subject of the game being potentially sold to a different third-party publisher or studio came up, and this is where we made some hurtful mistakes. Our lawyers advised us that if the game was sold to another party and we failed to raise objections right now about the superficial similarities, we would be waiving our right to raise anything with the hypothetical new owners if they chose to turn AQR from what it is now into a deliberate clone of Mini Metro or Mini Motorways. It was our reaction to this advice that kicked it all off, not any prior concerns.

Ultimately, a lawyer is there to provide counsel while the studio makes the final decision on how to handle these things; the lawyers were outlining a worst-case-scenario situation that wasn’t at all likely to happen, and we should have taken a moment to consider this. This was a big lesson for us and one we will carry into the future. We then reached out to the developer through our lawyer rather than directly from us, which was the wrong call and probably quite stressful to be on the receiving end of. While we never wanted AQR to be taken down, we can understand why the dev decided to, given the tone of our communication.

When the dev announced that AQR would be pulled from Steam, we went back through all the emails and realised that we had seriously misstepped. We’ve course-corrected, reached out directly to the developer, retracted all the legal requests, and apologised for how we’ve treated her. Thankfully she’s very patient and forgiving, and AQR will remain on Steam.

This is the first time our studio has been involved in such a situation and we’re putting processes in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again. We try to learn from our mistakes, and we appreciate your passion for upholding an ethical games industry.

Additionally, we’d like to say sorry for the lack of response and for not sharing this with you sooner. While we were talking with the developer of All Quiet Roads to resolve things, it seemed the right call at the time to respect everyone’s privacy. But we are aware of how a wall of silence can be interpreted, and it’s our goal to always be upfront and transparent with our players. We hope you’ll give us another chance.

In the meantime, please do check out All Quiet Roads. It's a great game and we want to show the developer some love.