dark and dark developer hammer game Lawyers have written to Valve regarding the game’s removal from Steam.
From the beginning of the year, Dark and Darker’s entire journey has been bumpy. After a very successful playtest in February, developer Ironmace was raided by the police, Dark and Darker were removed from Steam, and Nexon filed a lawsuit. Now, as GamesRadar reports, Ironmace’s lawyers have responded to Nexon’s allegations by writing to Valve to dispute the DMCA notice to remove the game from Steam.
“The takedown notice is based on completely unsubstantiated claims, including knowing and material misrepresentations, that Dark and Darker infringe Nexon’s copyright interests,” wrote Aaron Moss, an attorney for Greeberg Glusker representing Ironmace. Moss went on to say that Nexon’s claims were “nothing more than an anti-competitive bullying tactic designed to bring small independent game studios out of business.”
Moss emphasized in the letter that Naxon claims this is a game that “Nexon never made and does not exist,” noting that the mega-publisher “claims to have created a ‘unique concept, genre, plot, storyline’ for the game.” , characters and schemes’ – hardly any are copyrightable. While plots, storylines and actual expressions of characters can certainly be protected, copyright does not protect concepts.”
The concept in question is related to a game project called P3, with Nexon pointing out similarities in concept art for the unreleased game and Dark and Darker. However, Moss believes the comparisons don’t stop there, beyond the similarities in typical fantasy designs like The Witcher and the Barbarian.
Moss also addressed claims of stolen assets, writing, “The content that appears in Dark and Darker primarily consists of third-party assets obtained legally from the Unreal Engine asset store. To the extent that Nexon used the same or similar assets, this No copyright claims will be given.”
The letter was written specifically to Valve, so it’s more about getting the game back on Steam (presumably so that Ironmace doesn’t have to ask its playerbase to download the game), so the outcome of the lawsuit remains to be seen.
