Project Genom Removed From Steam Following Drama Involving Programmer

Project Genom seems to have had a stroke of bad luck, as it was removed from Steam sometime in the past 24 hours. But don't worry, they know who to blame: a man named Artem Stehnovsky who also goes by the name "CodeSpartan." According to the team at Neuronhaze, Stehnovsky allegedly scammed them out of a large amount of money after making excuses for why he couldn't continue to work on the game shortly before the Steam launch. He then filed a complaint with Valve, which is why the game has been removed from Steam, having allegedly attempted to use his filing of the complaint as blackmail beforehand.

Neuronhaze's recounting of the events that lead to the game's removal from Steam is as follows.

• Was receiving salary 1600$ monthly, when the rest of the team received much less or didn't receive any at all
• When the game was close to EA on Steam - he stated that he couldn't work because "suddenly" a house repair was started. In this regard, the team allocated 3800$ so he could hire workers and continue to write the code.
• After receiving the money he disappeared without doing virtually nothing on what was agreed. So a month before EA release the team had to find a new programmer quickly.
• After the release on Steam he began to blackmail the team, that if he won't take 10% of sales income, he will lodge a complaint with Steam (there is correspondence). Unfortunately, Valve policy is - when filing a complaint, to resolve the issue (in court or otherwise) Valve takes the game from sale, and that's what the scammers use.
• Artem had agreed (there is correspondence) that we will pay him 23600$ up until 20.12.2016. We have prepared and agreed with the text of the agreement with him, but Artem has never signed it.
• As of today, 22.11.2016, the conditions of the agreements are not violated by us, and we received the notice of removal the game from Steam, based on a letter received from Artem.

...at least that's how the team at Neuronhaze tells it. Said programmer tells a different story. He alleges in a post on Reddit that Neuronhaze attempted to scam him out of his agreed upon share of the money under the guise of him not working enough during a specific month, firing him so as not to pay him. According to Stehnovsky, this happened after the game sold extremely well during its first month on Early Access, allegedly totaling over $350,000 in sales. Furthermore, he alleges that he attempted to work out a contract in which he was paid what he was owed, avoiding a complex litigation process over work for which no contract was signed, project lead Ilya Usanov ultimately wanted to delay the signing of any contract until after Steam paid him on November 30th, at which point, Stehnovsky believes that Usanov will simply cash out and disappear. Stehnovsky also notes that Usanov has claimed that he is "not currently working on the Project until that date," which is why there have been no updates since the beginning of Early Access.

Neuronhaze's side of the story states that the game hasn't been updated because three programmers were hired to replace Stehnovsky's code, after which it was discovered that "there is an insane amount of errors."

Regardless of how this turns out, the game will continue to be unavailable on Steam until the litigation process is complete. I'm also fairly sure that the game is effectively dead in the water.

You can find more information about what's going on on the official website and in Stehnovsky's Reddit post.