Dark and Darker developers Ironmace have released a statement on the claim that they had stolen assets from Nexon, another development company. A Korean news company called This Is Game, have come out with an article in early February, stating that members of now Ironmace, had allegedly stolen assets of a game in development at Nexon.
In the Dark and Darker Discord, developer Terrance made a statement regarding the issue. “I want to address certain rumors that have started to circulate and reassure Dark and Darker fans that ABSOLUTELY NO stolen assets or code were used to make our game. Our code was built from scratch. Most of our assets are purchased from the Unreal marketplace. All other assets and all game design docs were created in-house. This has already been audited by an outside agency. As far as we know you cannot copyright a game genre,” said Terrance.
The article by This is Game stated that Nexon had disciplined Dark and Darker developers for allegedly trying to take game assets while still being employed there. Another Korean company, YTN, covered the lawsuit, stating “The Gyeonggi Southern Police Agency is investigating Iron Mace CEO Park Mo and other developers for violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Act.”
“Regarding the lawsuit, we consider it a separate personal matter claimed on one of our team members. No lawsuit has been filed against Ironmace. Regardless, we believe in our teammate and we look forward to the resolution of their personal matter,” said Terrance.
“Building games is hard enough without all the rumors and distractions in our industry. This is why we chose to handle matters privately, in respect to our peers in our industry. We’ve reached out through our back channels and do not believe the recent rumors were intentional and believe they are likely due to a disgruntled 3rd party. For now this will be our final statement on this matter. We are ready to defend if necessary but we prefer to focus our energy on bettering our craft. We have a lot of work ahead of us for the next playtest and we’ll let our work do the talking,” said Terrance.
Dark and Darker is currently going through development and Ironmace confirmed the next playtest will be on April 14-19th.