Dark and Darker lawyers fire back at Nexon: 'nothing more than anti-competitive bully tactics designed to put a small indie firm out of business'
Dark and Darker developer Ironmace may be the "punk hero of PC gaming(opens in new tab)" right now, but it's also making some power moves in the strait-laced chambers of the law. The studio has now fired back at Nexon with a full-throated defense of its game, saying that Nexon is just mad that some of its former employees have struck out on their own.
It's been a hell of a ride for Dark and Darker, which blew up on Steam(opens in new tab) earlier this year but then became embroiled in a legal beef with Nexon(opens in new tab), which accused the studio of using stolen code and assets to make the game. A DMCA claim in March forced the game from Steam(opens in new tab), so Ironmace went «old school» and distributed a promised April playtest build via torrent(opens in new tab).
But now Ironmace is pushing back. In a letter to Valve sent on behalf of the studio, legal firm Greenberg Glusker said that Nexon has no legal basis to force Dark and Darker off of Steam, and that its claims «are nothing more than anti-competitive bully tactics designed to put a small indie firm out of business.»
Nexon's claims against Dark and Darker center on allegations that it uses code and assets stolen from a project revealed in 2021 as P3(opens in new tab). The concept for P3 was eventually abandoned in favor of a more conventional survival game design, which is roughly when Ironmace was founded. Early screens from P3 do bear obvious similarities to Dark and Darker, but Ironmace's lawyer says that's irrelevant, because P3 is «a game that Nexon never made and which does not exist.»
«Nexon claims to have created 'unique concepts, genre, plot, story line, characters, and plans for the game'—almost none of which is subject to copyright protection,»
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