Nexon, the publisher behind MapleStory and other online games, is embroiled in a series of lawsuits against indie hit developer Ironmace Games Dark and darker. The conflict has led to a police raid, the removal of the game from Steam, and a developer-distributed torrent. With a new lawsuit, it seems this complicated conflict is far from over.
Dark and darker is a fantasy game first made available for playtesting in 2022. Players assume the role of typical fantasy classes such as barbarian or mage, then fight their way through fantasy dungeons, attacked by both nefarious skeletons and other players.
Enjoyed the game interest during his playtestsbut Ironmace was hampered by allegations from Nexon that Dark and darker was created from stolen code and assets. Nexon has taken legal action against Ironmace; in March, Nexon filed for cease and desist and DMCA takedown that led to the removal of Ironmace Dark and darker from Steam. Ironmace prematurely published, then pulled, a GoFundMe with a goal of $500,000 to cover legal fees and continue to pay staff during development Dark and darker. With Ironmace unable to run its scheduled playtest through Steam, the developer has made the game available through torrents instead of.
Now Nexon is pursuing a lawsuit against Ironmace for alleged copyright infringement. Nexon claims Dark and darker was built in part from one of the publisher’s projects, announced as “P3” in 2021and that P3 and Dark and darker are essentially the same game. Nexon developers would later become part of Ironmace, a studio that describes itself as “a merry bunch of veteran game developers disillusioned with the exploitative and greedy practices we once helped create.”
Nexon filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington on April 14 seeking a jury trial.
Nexon’s complaint names Ju-Hyun Choi, a developer at Ironmace, and Terence Seungha Park, CEO of Ironmace. Choi is a former Nexon employee and the director of the P3 project, Nexon said in its complaint. Choi allegedly “asked the members of the P3 project team to convert P3 outside of Nexon”; “succeeded in attracting almost half of the P3 team, including Park”; and “transferred 11,602 P3 Project files from Nexon to its own private servers.”
Nexon says this gave Ironmace a significant head start Dark and darker‘s development:
While it normally takes a long time to develop a video game of P3’s complexity from scratch, Ironmace was able to release a demo of P3 – renamed “Dark and Darker” – just ten months after Ironmace was founded. The reason Defendants were able to release Dark and Darker so quickly was that they took advantage of the head start they got by stealing Nexon’s trade secrets—trade secrets that took a team of more than 20 people to work for 11 months at Nexon’s expense. .
The lawsuit also compares assets of P3 and dark and darker, such as a chest opening animation and the position of a potion on the player.
Nexon is seeking an injunction to block the distribution of Dark and darker and indefinite monetary relief from damages. Throughout the conflict, Ironmace has maintained its innocence, saying that all code was written in-house and most of the assets were purchased from the Unreal Engine Marketplace.