A Yonhap News (opens in new tab) Report (Google translates (opens in new tab)) says police in South Korea raided Dark and Darker’s office (opens in new tab) Developer Ironmace and confiscated materials related to the project. The raid on the city of Seongnam was reportedly linked to allegations that the game is being made using code and stolen assets from Nexon.
Nexon was reportedly working on a similar project, which was revealed in 2021 as P3, before pulling the plug on development later this year. Ironmace was founded shortly thereafter and includes former Nexon employees who apparently left the company on the best of terms: The Ironmace website (opens in new tab) describes the studio as “a merry band of veteran game developers disillusioned with the exploitative and greedy practices we once helped create.”
Nexon reportedly filed a complaint with the Gyeonggi Southern Police Agency on the matter in August 2021. According to the Yonhap report, in August 2022, Gyeonggi Southern Police referred the matter to the Seongnam branch of the Suwon District Procuratorate, which requested a “supplementary investigation” in December.
Ironmace denied the allegations (opens in new tab) in February and said that “absolutely no stolen assets or code were used to develop our game”. It also described a lawsuit filed by Nexon against at least one former employee who joined Ironmace as a “separate personal matter.”
In messages posted to the Dark and darker discord (opens in new tab), an Ironmace employee named Graysun, admitted the police search took place but said “nothing was found.” They also advised followers to “not worry too much about what you hear about Nexon.”
“Most of what you will see on the internet is incorrect,” Graysun wrote. “There will be no delay in development and there is nothing to worry about.”
Ironmace shared the same message to a wider audience via Twitter:
Don’t trust everything on the internet. Here’s a message from the developers about the Nexon drama. #DarkAndDarker pic.twitter.com/4BfZ38TU8AMarch 8, 2023
Dark and Darker, “an unforgiving hardcore fantasy FPS dungeon PvPvE adventure,” made a splash during February’s Steam Next Fest and became one of the top ten most played games on Steam (opens in new tab). The studio recently announced that it has decided to conduct another round of testing (opens in new tab) before a planned start in Early Access: The fifth and probably last test session will run on Steam from April 14th to 19th.
I have reached out to Ironmace for more information on the Dark and Darker Search and Seizure and will update when I receive a response.
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