Image Source: Steam
Dark and Darker, a fantasy reimagining of the intense PvPvE extraction game genre popularised by Escape from Tarkov, was making waves on Steam. IRONMACE’s Korean creators provided a public demo that peaked at 275K concurrent players two months ago, and another 175K people followed the Steam page to remain informed on its road to release.
Unfortunately, the game was abruptly pulled from Steam two days ago. It became rapidly evident that the problem was no bug but something considerably more catastrophic.
IRONMACE reported that it has received a DMCA takedown notice from NEXON, in addition to a stop and desist letter from the same corporation. IRONMACE has subsequently provided the complete DMCA takedown notice, which can be seen here.
Dark and Darker, according to NEXON, was created using ‘trade secrets’ and ‘copyrighted information’ stolen from the company’s P3 Project, which launched in August 2020. The company also claims that after leaving NEXON and founding IRONMACE, certain key developers working on P3 misappropriated the aforementioned trade secrets and copyrighted information to create Dark and Darker. IRONMACE, according to NEXON, could not have created Dark and Darker so swiftly without the misappropriations.
IRONMACE, on the other hand, disclosed that both the primary accused individual and the studio as a whole had already been subject to many search warrants, which did not help to substantiate these assertions. Furthermore, they state that none of the content, setting, or story in either game is truly unique, having appeared in multiple videogames and pen and paper games. To prove this argument, IRONMACE asked ChatGPT for a comparable game concept and received a description that is almost identical to the game itself.
