Korean publisher Webzen announced on April 21 that it had filed a lawsuit against developer Hound13 for announcing plans to independently re-release the open-world action RPG DragonSword on Steam under the name DragonSword: Awakening. Webzen, who originally signed a publishing deal with Hound13 for the title, claims the latter does not have legitimate publishing rights. This comes in the aftermath of a two-month long dispute between the two parties.
Originally announced as “Project D,” Dragon Sword was officially unveiled as a free-to-play title back in December 2022. In January 2026, the game was launched in Korea with Webzen as the publisher. However, around a month later, Hound13 announced that it would terminate its publishing contract with Webzen, citing an unpaid minimum guarantee (hereafter MG, the minimum amount of money the publisher is obligated to pay the developer regardless of revenue) as the reason.
According to the developer, the remaining balance of the MG was left unpaid by Webzen due to Hound13’s worsening financial situation and uncertain prospects for continuing game development. At the time, Hound13 stated that it would keep the game’s services running for the following 3 months as per its contract with Webzen, until it either settled for a new publisher or established the means to publish the game in-house.
On the same day, Webzen issued a statement of its own, arguing that Hound13’s contract termination announcement was made unilaterally, without agreement from the publisher. Webzen then suspended Dragon Sword’s payment functions as of the same day, and promised full refunds for all in-game purchases made since launch in order to protect consumer rights.
Allegedly, Webzen had invested about 30 billion won (about $20.3 million USD) in January 2024 to support the development of Dragon Sword, eventually acquiring publishing rights for the game. At the time, it was estimated that the game would be completed in March 2025, and the invested amount was supposed to cover operational costs for one year after the development period had ended. Unfortunately, the development process dragged out, and Hound13 was subsequently met with financial difficulties. However, Webzen says that it continued to financially support the developer to keep the project going, even paying out a portion of the MG earlier than supposed to (as per the contract, the MG was planned to be paid out after the game’s official launch).
Afterwards, on March 3, Webzen announced that Hound13’s contract termination notice didn’t fulfill the legal requirements to make it valid, which meant that the publishing deal was still effective. Additionally, the publisher also revealed that it had paid the full MG amount on February 27 in order not to disrupt the game’s service. As pointed out by GameMeca, while Hound13 acknowledged the payment, they argued that it should’ve been paid on the date the two parties originally agreed on, and that this payment didn’t automatically reverse the termination of the contract.
The new Steam version of Dragon Sword: Awakening was announced on April 10 by Hound13. As a game separate from Dragon Sword, which had already launched as a free-to-play title in Korea, DragonSword: Awakening would be a globally distributed buy-to-play RPG. In response, Webzen issued another statement claiming that Hound13’s independent publishing of the game was being carried out without consultation with the original publisher. As Hound13 does not possess the legitimate publishing rights for the game, Webzen argues that the Steam release would cause confusion to consumers, especially as refunds from the original live-service version are still being processed. Therefore, in addition to filing a lawsuit to assert the validity of their publishing rights, Webzen has made a request for a preliminary injunction to suspend the release of DragonSword: Awakening.
At the time of writing, Hound13 still hasn’t made any statements regarding the lawsuit, and there are still many unclear points regarding the dispute between the two parties. It is yet to be seen how the lawsuit will play out and how its outcome will impact the future of Dragon Sword and DragonSword: Awakening.
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