Dark and Darker studio fires back over DMCA takedown fiasco: 'We hope that Nexon will stop making baseless claims'

pcgamer.com:

Dark and Darker developer Ironmace has released a four-part response to its legal challenge from Maplestory publisher Nexon, including an overview statement, a written rebuttal and asset comparisons from Ironmace's character concept artist, a list of in-game assets and their origins, and the reportedly full, only partially-redacted git log(opens in new tab) (a sequential history of changes to the game's code) of Dark and Darker's development thus far.

Ironmace's overview response(opens in new tab) is six pages long and also includes a link to Nexon's takedown request(opens in new tab) to Valve. Ironmace frames the private server accusation against P3 and Dark and Darker project lead Ju-Hyun Choi as a belated retaliation for his choosing to leave Nexon in the middle of 2021, claiming that his usage of a private server to store game assets was an outgrowth of work from home adaptations during Covid lockdowns.

As Ironmace puts it, Choi's usage of the server was discouraged by Nexon, but never directly shut down, and receded to a secondary concern as the team returned to office. It was when Choi announced an intention to leave Nexon, Ironmace claims, that legal proceedings against him began and he was terminated by the company. Further, Ironmace alleges that Nexon only copyrighted its P3 development materials in February of this year, seemingly in response to Dark and Darker's success in the Steam Next Fest.

Ironmace also had harsh words for Nexon's claim that the studio could not have produced working prototypes of Dark and Darker so quickly without trade secrets from Nexon: «The fact that a big game company like Nexon can't develop games this fast doesn't mean that other studios, big and small, can't develop at that