Dark and Darker DMCA Allegations Are ‘Baseless,’ Developer Says

gamerant.com:

In response to the latest development in the debacle surrounding indie dungeon crawler Dark and Darker, developer Ironmace says that Nexon's DMCA takedown notice is “baseless.” The situation has been growing steadily more serious, resulting in Dark and Darker being removed from Steam on March 25, but it all started a year and a half ago.

In 2021, a group of Nexon employees were working on a project dubbed P3. One of the project team leaders left the company after being accused of leaking or stealing data, project assets, and source code. Over time, approximately 10 other P3 team members left Nexon and moved to Ironmace, the developer of Dark and Darker. In December 2022, the game began an alpha playtest, which was accessible via Steam. A couple of months later, it was revealed that Nexon had filed a legal complaint accusing Dark and Darker's developer of using P3 project code and assets in its new dungeon crawler.

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Nexon claims that its project was used as a prototype for Dark and Darker, which showed “striking similarities with the concept for P3 in major gameplay, rules and arts, which could not have been made independently.” The accusation was apparently convincing enough for authorities to raid the Dark and Darker developer's offices in early March 2023 and the game’s subsequent removal from Steam. Ironmace has now issued a statement addressing the situation saying, among many other things, that Nexon’s allegations are baseless.

In the message, Ironmace insists that it has no knowledge of any former P3 project member possessing or using stolen assets or other copyrighted material. Dark and Darker is a basic dungeon crawler, continues the statement, whose concept is