Dark and Darker looks set to be the next big indie hype game on Steam. The dungeon crawler relies on PVP battles with knights, villains and magicians who sneak through dark dungeons in the best Escape From Tarkov manner, collect loot and at the end have to find an extraction point with their loot.
The hard-hitting game isn’t for everyone. GameStar author Tillmann was completely shocked after his dungeon excursion:
After four enormously successful play tests, in which more than 100,000 players were online at the same time, the Korean developers are now facing legal problems. According to media reports, there was even a first house search in the studios.
That’s behind the police operation
What happened? How Yonhap News reported that there was a police raid on the Ironmace Studios headquarters in the South Korean city of Seongnam.
Why is that happend? The studio is accused of data theft by the publisher Nexon. Many of the studio’s employees, including Ironmace CEO Seung-ha Park, previously worked at Nexon as developers.
During this time, Park is said to have leaked game files and assets and shortly afterwards resigned from Nexon with much of the Projekt P3 team. Due to the leak and the lack of developers, Nexon had to scrap the game.
According to Nexon, Dark and Darker, which actually bears great similarities to Project P3, is based on the stolen files. As early as 2021, the publisher filed a complaint for unfair competition.
Ironmace, meanwhile, has denied allegations that all of Dark and Darker’s assets were either self-made or purchased from the Unreal Store.
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Dark and Darker: The gloomy PvP dungeon crawler explains its gameplay in the trailer
What’s next? According to Yonhap News, the raid took place on March 8, 2023. The police should now compare the data obtained with the data from Project P3, which was passed to the authorities by Nexon.
Dark and Darker is currently planning a final, fifth playtest for next month. After that, the dungeon crawler should start in Early Access on Steam. It remains to be seen whether this will happen or whether the authorities will put a stop to the developers.