Dark and Darker developers, Iron Mace, responded to the DMCA ordered by Nexon, ultimately causing the game to be removed from Steam on March 25. On Iron Mace’s Discord, they had given proof of a git log, or a DevOps tool that is used for source code management, as well as a list of assets they had purchased. 

We want to make it clear that this claim is baseless. Our company, Iron Mace, has never owned or used Nexon’s copyrighted materials or trade secrets.

In Nexon’s DMCA, they stated, “Nexon has a good faith belief that Dark and Darker is infringing Nexon’s copyrights in the P3 Game. Nexon also has good faith belief that Dark and Darker was developed by (1) stealing the source codes, art resources, and  build files of the P3 Game and (2) using without authorization the stolen  source codes, art resources, and build files as the foundation for Dark and Darker.”

In response, Iron Mace has stated, “Nexon belatedly registered the copyright related to the P3 project in February 2023, more than six months after Dark and Darker was released, and is claiming copyright infringement against it.” They continue to state that an anonymous team member, known as A, during their time at Nexon was approved to use a personal server during COVID-19 pandemic and had asked if they had permission to use the server. After Nexon had rejected this, they discontinued the use of the server, according to Iron Mace. 

“A moved the connected system and started deleting the trade secret files, but the immediate hurdles…the migration of development systems to internal servers was not a quick and thorough process. As a result, some auto-upload scripts related to the build system were left running…A made the mistake of using the personal server again without re-approval due to the anxiety of reduced work efficiency and the burden of meeting the schedule and achieving the goal,” said Iron Mace.

The developers had also included a comparison between resource files of P3, Nexon’s game, and Dark and Darker. In addition, in the response statement they’ve added “Subsequently, in the DMCA notice, Nexon claims that the only way to come up with an idea similar to the P3 project is stealing, and as a basis, it claims that the P3 project has never been disclosed to a third party during this period. However, this claim can be proven unequivocally false. Nexon unveiled the P3 in a media showcase in August 2021, and has since written about it in numerous blogs and articles.” 

Although there is no clear outcome, the future of Dark and Darker is yet to be determined.