Dark and Darker legal dispute continues as Nexon files lawsuit

Nexon, publisher behind MapleStoryIronmace Games, developer of the indie smash hit Dark and darker. The conflict has led to a police raid, the game’s removal from Steam, and a developer-distributed torrent. This conflict could be far from being over with a recent lawsuit.

Dark and darkerThis fantasy game was first available to playtest in 2022. As a barbarian, mage or other fantasy class, players battle through fantasy dungeons. They are attacked both by nefarious monsters like skeletons, as well and their fellow gamers.

Ironmace’s playtests have been well received, but Nexon has made false allegations that are preventing the game from gaining traction. Darker and darkerThe code is stolen and the assets are taken. Nexon took legal action against Ironmace. Nexon had filed a cease and deist order and DMCA takedown in March that caused Ironmace to remove the game. Dark and darkerSteam. Ironmace published a GoFundMe, but then removed it, with the goal of $500,000. This was to cover legal costs and pay for staff while development continued. Darker and darker. Ironmace was unable to run its playtest via Steam and so the developer decided to make the game torrent-only.

Nexon now files a complaint against Ironmace alleging copyright violations. Nexon says Dark and darker was built in part from one of the publisher’s projects, announced as “P3” in 2021, and that P3 and Dark and darkerThey are essentially the exact same game. Developers from Nexon would go on to be a part of Ironmace, a studio which describes itself as “a merry band of veteran game developers disillusioned by the exploitative and greedy practices we once helped create.”

Nexon has filed a suit at the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Washington on 14 April demanding a trial by jury.

Nexon’s complaint names Ju-Hyun Choi, a developer at Ironmace, and Terence Seungha Park, CEO of Ironmace. Nexon’s complaint states that Choi was a Nexon former employee, and also the director of P3 Project. Choi is alleged to have “solicited the members of the P3 Project team to recreate P3 outside of Nexon”; “succeeded in recruiting nearly half of the P3 team including Park”; and “transferred 11,602 P3 Project files from Nexon to his own private servers.”

Nexon said that Ironmace gained a considerable advantage on Dark and darker’s development:

While it normally takes a significant amount of time to develop a video game of P3’s complexity 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 release Dark and Darker so quickly was that they took advantage of the head start given to them by stealing Nexon’s trade secrets—trade secrets that took a team of more than twenty people working for eleven months at Nexon’s expense to develop.

It also compares P3 assets and Dark and darker like a chest-opening animation and a potion’s position on the player.

Nexon has filed a lawsuit to prevent the sale of its products. Dark and darkerThe amount of compensation is not determined. Ironmace maintained its innocence throughout the dispute, claiming that the code had been written internally and the majority of assets purchased on the Unreal Engine Marketplace.