Dark and Darker legal dispute continues as Nexon files lawsuit

Nexon, the publisher behind maplestory and other online games, is embroiled in a series of legal actions against Ironmace Games, the developer of the indie hit dark and darker. The conflict has led to a police raid, the game's removal from Steam, and a torrent distributed by the developer. With a new lawsuit, it seems that this complicated conflict is far from over.

dark and darker is a fantasy game that first became available for playtests in 2022. Players take on the role of typical fantasy classes like barbarians or wizards, and then fight their way through fantasy dungeons, assailed by both nefarious skeletons as by other players.

The game has enjoyed interest during your testsbut Ironmace has been hampered by accusations made by Nexon that he dark and darker it is created from stolen code and assets. Nexon has taken legal action against Ironmace; in March, Nexon Filed a Cease and Desist and DMCA Takedown which led to the removal of Ironmace dark and darker steam. Ironmace published prematurely, then withdrew, a GoFundMe with a goal of $500,000 to cover legal fees and continue to pay staff during the development of dark and darker. With Ironmace unable to run his planned playtest via Steam, the developer made the game available via torrents instead.

Now Nexon is following through with a lawsuit against Ironmace, alleging copyright infringement. Nexon alleges dark and darker was built in part from one of the publisher's projects, announced as "P3" in 2021and that P3 and dark and darker they are substantially the same game. The Nexon developers would become part of Ironmace, a studio that describes himself as "a merry band of veteran game developers disillusioned by the greedy and exploitative practices we once helped create."

Nexon filed a lawsuit on April 14 in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington demanding a jury trial.

Nexon's complaint names Ju-Hyun Choi, developer of Ironmace, and Terence Seungha Park, CEO of Ironmace. Choi is a former Nexon employee and director of the P3 project, Nexon said in its complaint. Choi is alleged to have “requested Project P3 team members to recreate P3 outside of Nexon”; He “managed to recruit almost half of the P3 team, including Park”; and "transferred 11,602 files from Nexon's P3 Project to its own private servers."

Nexon says that this gave Ironmace a substantial advantage over dark and darkerdevelopment of:

While it normally takes a significant amount of time to develop a game of the complexity of P3 from scratch, Ironmace was able to release a demo of P3, renamed "Dark and Darker", just ten months after Ironmace was formed. The reason Defendants were able to launch Dark and Darker so quickly was that they took the advantage given to them by stealing Nexon's trade secrets, trade secrets that required a team of over twenty people working for eleven months at the expense of Nexon to develop .

The lawsuit also compares the assets of P3 and dark and darker, such as a chest opening animation and the position of a potion on the player.

Nexon seeks injunctive relief to block the distribution of dark and darker and indeterminate monetary compensation for damages. Throughout the conflict, Ironmace has maintained his innocence, saying that all of the code was written in-house and most of the assets were purchased from the Unreal Engine Marketplace.