Frogwares is a Ukrainian game development studio known for its numerous Sherlock Holmes games, along with The Sinking City, which released in 2019. The studio’s headquarters is in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, which is currently at the center of a fierce fight for control as the Russian Invasion of Ukraine continues.
Understandably, being located in the center of a brutal war is a difficult position for any business that wishes to stay afloat, especially when the looming threat of bombing could bring years of work to a sudden end. Frogwares is an independent studio without a parent company and needs game releases so it can make money to pay its staff.
It is with this necessity in mind that Frogwares is moving forward with the release of Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter for Nintendo Switch on April 7 this year. The game is another of Frogwares many forays into the Sherlock Holmes franchise. The game had already released on other platforms in 2016, but Frogwares had partnered with Mataboo back in 2021 to bring the game to Switch. Mataboo is a third-party studio that specialize in porting games mostly in the mid-budget range that independent studios like Frogwares operate in.
Frogwares has released a statement as to how their studio is operating given the ongoing war in Ukraine. No Ukrainian staff members are expected to work given the situation. Many game developers have fled Ukraine; some of those that have were able to establish a remote working situation with Frogwares, while others have left the studio to volunteer with humanitarian aid or join the country’s defense forces. Frogwares also have a subsidiary company located in Dublin, which should be able to continue to work in relative normality despite its sister-studio’s situation.
Frogwares is continuing forward with their work in the hopes that Russia’s war in Ukraine will be brought to a swift conclusion. The longer a war drags on the harder it becomes for a pre-established business to rebuild and get back to the point it was at before the war. Frogwares says that it wishes to “somehow keep things moving forward. So that when this is all over, and it’s time to rebuild and restart, we are not starting from zero.”
Frogwares hasn’t just been working on the Sherlock Holmes Switch port during all of this, however. The Frogwares Twitter is very active in-between updates on the studio’s current projects and working situations. The studio posts about the war from a Ukrainian perspective, with each tweet marked with the day count for how long the war has been going on. These posts range from what the studio or a member of the team has seen or done in that day of the war, to links to charities and humanitarian efforts where people can donate to help. This is also something other eastern European developers like CD Projekt Red have urged people to do.
Sherlock Holmes The Devil’s Daughter is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, with a Switch port scheduled for April 7, 2022.
