dark and dark developer hammer now being sued Nickerson On “Copyright Infringement,” in the latest update on this bumpy journey.
This comes from Escape from Tarkov streamer and content creator Onepeg, who shared a lawsuit filed by Nexon last Friday (April 14) accusing Dark and Darker of copyright infringement. To get you up to speed quickly, Dark and Darker was pulled from Steam last month due to Nexon’s cease and desist due to the belief that Ironmace Games had been using stolen assets and code to develop Dark and Darker. This belief comes from the fact that Ironmace founder Terence Park and fellow developer Ju-Hyun Choi previously worked at Nexon, developing an apparently similar fantasy game in 2020-2021, code-named P3.
Nexon accused Choi of stealing assets while working there, while Dark and Darker was developed with them. Now, thanks to Onepeg, it’s clear that this has escalated into Nexon’s lawsuit against Ironmace. According to the lawsuit, both Choi and Park will sign a “one-year non-compete clause” with Nexon as part of their employee agreement to “prevent employees from working in the same industry that may violate the company’s interests.” Without Nexon’s prior consent, Nexon’s trade secrets . ”
Nexon claims that “Defendants stole P3 source code, audiovisual and other materials developed by Nexon.” As part of the lawsuit, Nexon is seeking monetary compensation for P3’s development costs and is also seeking to cease development and distribution of Dark and Darker. “Indulging Defendants’ actions threatens Nexon, the video game industry, and all consumers who enjoy playing complex video games,” the lawsuit states.
“Video game developers wouldn’t be able to devote years of man-hours to developing video games if their employees could simply transfer their employer’s project files to their own personal servers and start a new company.”
Last week, Ironmace Games encouraged Dark and Darker players to download torrents for the game’s next alpha test.
