Dark And Darker Devs Accused Of Stealing Game Assets From Nexon

thegamer.com:

Dark and Darker is still in its alpha playtest phase, but it's already generating quite a bit of buzz. The upcoming dungeon-diving fantasy adventure game has broken 100,000 concurrent players on Steam and there are a ton of videos floating around online of the bizarre fun you can expect in the PvPvE magic-and-bow-slinging shooter.

However, it seems Dark and Darker has a controversial genesis. According to a new report from Korean site ThisIsGame (via GamesRadar and this helpful Reddit translation), members of Dark and Darker developer Ironmace might have stolen code and assets from a canceled game at Nexon.

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The report notes Nexon was working on a game called "P3" which was very similar to Dark and Darker. P3 was first announced in August 2023 as a first-person fantasy adventure game where a group of adventurers goes dungeon diving for loot. However, that game was eventually canceled in favor of P7, a more traditional extraction shooter with modern firearms. The swap to P7 happened in September 2021, with Ironmace incorporated in October 2021.

According to the report, Dark and Darker is essentially P3 and Ironmace are former Nexon employees who were fired for leaking code and breaking confidentiality agreements. Nexon is also reviewing potential legal action against Ironmace, accusing the Korean developer of stealing assets for use in Dark and Darker.

Ironmace CEO Terence Seung-ha posted a message on Discord denying the allegations, writing, "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