Back in August, we reported on players filing pre-litigation paperwork to sue Soulbound Studios over Chronicles of Elyria in a class-action lawsuit after hiring a lawyer. This paperwork involved sending letters to both Soulbound Studios and Xsolla, the company responsible for processing payment. As of a couple of days ago, there’s been an update on the Discord channel tracking the case:
The letter from Xsolla’s lawyer effectively defers to Soulbound Studios, simply calling itself a “conduit” for transactions between Soulbound and its customers and stating that the company is unable to respond fully to the pre-litigation letter “without knowing […] contentions about Xsolla’s role in the alleged breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation, fraud, and how [the company] violated [the related] Business and Professions Code.”
The response from Souldbound’s lawyer is significantly more aggressive in tone, outright calling the game merely delayed and continuing to claim that although the studio had laid off its staff, it was still operating and working to deliver CoE:
“While Soulbound’s current financial situation required the company to terminate substantially all of their employees, the founder of Soulbound has, since the end of March, continued to work on CoE on an unpaid basis as his only work and plans to continue working on CoE until Soulbound is able to deliver CoE, with the elements promised to backers.”
The letter further addresses the complaints of backers, claiming that the studio is under no obligation to provide deliverables until they are ready, arguing that the studio’s gameplay videos are not misleading, and denying the claim that Soulbound didn’t shut down its store and stop crowdfunding after the mass layoff. The letter further demands that any additional correspondence include “actual evidence or facts” in support of future claims.
“It is difficult to advise our client to take any particular action based solely on blanket and conclusory allegations. That said, Soulbound agrees to preserve documents and other potential evidence as requested in your letter; and is happy to immediately discuss non-monetary resolutions, with the understanding that the company is lacking the resources to make any monetary settlement offers.”
Doing a quick check of CoE’s official channels, we see no recent updates on either Twitter, the official site, or its developer-facing forum sections.
