“We are pleased to announce that Project Genom is now once again available on Steam.” That’s the news from a new press release this morning from studio NeuronHaze, and it’s true indeed.
The early access sci-fi MMO vanished from Steam last week in the midst of a public scuffle between NeuronHaze and Artem “CodeSpartan” Stekhnovskii, the game’s lead programmer. Stekhnovskii, alleging that NeuronHaze had stiffed him his agreed-upon salary, lodged a DMCA complaint with Valve that saw the game pulled temporarily, arguing that by law, the game’s code belonged to him. That set the clock running for NeuronHaze to lodge a counter-claim, which is apparently exactly what it did, allowing Valve to return the game to service and no doubt breathe a sligh of relief that now it’s on Stekhnovskii to press his claim in a real court.
It is not clear whether and how Stekhnovskii has been or will be compensated, though last week NeuronHaze insisted the game’s copyrights were secure and that it had already hired three programmers to replace Stekhnovskii, further boasting that it planned to sue Stekhnovskii himself for extortion. We’ve reached out to Stekhnovskii for clarification on the behind-the-scenes and his legal plans and will update when we know more.
