Dark and Darker Legal Issues, Explained

Ironmace Games' dungeon crawler Dark and Darker has run into some legal issues. So, what is going on with the game?

Dark and Darker, Ironmace Games’ player vs player vs enemy dungeon crawler, has caused a stir, and not just because people have been looking forward to it. So, what were all these legal shenanigans about? If that’s what you’re wondering, here are the Dark and Darker legal issues, explained.

Why Did Dark and Darker Run Into Legal Trouble?

Dark and Darker’s legal issues, which saw the game temporarily removed from Steam, stemmed from a dispute with a former publisher, Nexon. No, not Nacon; that was a whole different legal drama.

This situation had been going on since at least 2021 when Nexon filed a legal complaint alleging that Ironmace Games had stolen code. The short version was that Nexon says that Ironmace took code and assets from a canceled project, left, and went to make their own copy of the game they were working on. The long version? You might want to strap in for this.

Prior to forming Ironmace, some of the developer’s staff worked for Nexon (based in South Korea), developing a game called P3 Project. According to Nexon’s 2023 US filing (there’s a US and a South Korean case ongoing), the P3 Project was a fantasy game “.. where players hunt for items while fighting each other and the monsters in the game.”

They alleged that, while the project was canceled, the developers who later became Ironmace stole code and assets and that “P3 and Dark and Darker are substantially the same game.” Ironmace’s Ju-Hyun Choi and Terence Seungha Park (the latter of whom founded the company) were named as well as the company itself.

So, more than just arguing that Darker and Darker is a P3 clone, Nexon alleges that the game uses assets taken from the stolen project. How many assets? The 2023 filing claims that “11,602 P3 Project files” were taken. They also allege that Choi recruited people from Nexon’s P3 team to help recreate the game outside of Nexon.

But this was more than just a case of legal back and forth. In response to Nexon’s 2021 complaint, the South Korean police raided Ironmace’s office. Ironmace claimed that nothing had been taken, but you can bet not a lot of work got done that day.