Even after about four years, Ironmace’s legal troubles are still being dragged down.
in Message to fans of Discord Server and X announced Dark and Darder Developer Ironmace that the game has been delisted from the Epic Games store.Also.
The registration appears to be at first glance related to the ongoing legal battle between Korean developers and publisher Nexon, which began in 2023, before the PVPVE fantasy extraction game was released.
That’s at least the Ironmace assumption. The reason is not yet completely clear.
Long-standing legal issues
Dark and Darker legal issues returned to the beginning in March 2023, when it was first removed from the online storefront, following a DMCA takedown notification from Nexon.
Earlier that month, Iron Mace was attacked by South Korean police on an allegation from Nexon that the game was developed using stolen assets and staff after the leader of a project called “P3” leaked his assets and was to be fired in 2021.
Nexon claimed that the former lead poached some of his teammates to develop a game similar to Project P3.
The legal battle continued during 2023. This included a strange and short-lived Gofundme to raise money for legal defense, after a call from Ironmace to reject Nexon’s claims from Steam, until it finally resurrected.
South Korea’s Hoangang Daily said that last month, a South Korean court ruled that Iron Mace had not infringed on Nexon’s copyright, but still stole trade secrets and leaked company data and ordered him to pay 8.5 billion won ($5.86 million) in damages.
At the time, Nexon pledged to appeal the rejection of copyright claims.
Dark and dark are still available on Steam, which has since been played for free after the strange waves of review bombing in January.
The legendary status upgrade, which was free for 24 hours in December, suggests that it can be purchased at the epic game store at the time of writing, suggesting that its removal from storefronts has not been completed.
