Earlier today, independent developer Ironmace removed their game Dark and Darker from Steam. This was due to Korean publisher Nexon’s recent cease-and-desist demand, which claimed Ironmace stole assets from them to develop Dark and Darker. Now the game’s Steam page no longer exists, instead leading to Steam’s home page.
On a Reddit post on /r/Games, Ironmace reportedly made statement concerning the incident on their Discord:
To all our fans, we have recently been served a cease and desist letter and DMCA takedown by Nexon regarding Dark and Darker based on distorted claims. We are currently working with our legal team to remedy this issue in the best manner possible. Due to the sensitive legal nature of this issue we must be careful with our statements so as to not jeopardize our position. We ask for your understanding as we work to get the game back up as quickly as possible. Please know that we will do all that is possible for our fans. Thanks!
The grounds for Nexon’s cease-and-desist originate from a case involving the head developer of their “P3” project getting fired for allegedly leaking company data and assets during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following this, half the P3 team quit Nexon and joined Ironmace to work on Dark and Darker. This birthed claims that P3 was a prototype for Dark and Darker and that Ironmace used Nexon assets to develop the game. Ironmace responded to these allegations, stating their assets were either original or purchased from the Unreal Marketplace.
Ironmace’s studios were raided by police a couple of weeks ago. Police reportedly seized Dark and Darker development materials for investigation. Regarding this, an Ironmace developer confirmed the raid occurred but said “it was a quick process and nothing was found.”
Following these events, Dark and Darker‘s future is now unknown.