Dark And Darker Devs Deny Stealing Assets From Nexon

Earlier this week, Dark and Darker was accused of stealing code and assets from a canceled, Nexon-developed Game, but Ironmace CEO Park Terence Seung-ha said, "ABSOLUTELY NO stolen assets or code were used to make our Game".

Ironmace is made up of former Nexon employees who were "disciplined and fired", and the report claims that they used materials from their work at Nexon to build Dark and Darker (thanks, PC Gamer). However, Seung-ha wrote, "Our code was built from scratch. Most of our assets are purchased from the Unreal marketplace.

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"All other assets and all Game design docs were created inhouse. This has already been audited by an outside agency. As far as we know you cannot copyright a Game genre."

You can see a comparison between P3 and Dark and Darker in the photo embedded above - they share strikingly similar UIs and aesthetics, though Seung-ha refutes claims that anything was specifically taken from Nexon, and that the team has built this new project entirely from the ground-up.

For context, P3 was announced in 2021 by Nexon (the allegations claim that this project was used as a prototype for Dark and Darker), but the idea was scrapped in favour of P7, a modern survival adventure Game. Dark and Darker's devs left around that point, and based on its website, it wasn't on good terms.

"We are a merry band of veteran game developers disillusioned by the exploitative and greedy practices we once helped create," it says. "We are experts who have worked on many of the biggest hits in Korea. We have seen first hand how corporate game companies sell their soul for the easy payday. We are disappointed to see them doubling down on more and more exploitative practices, becoming more like casinos instead of bringing joy to gamers."

As of right now, no lawsuit has been filed against Ironmace, but Nexon has reportedly filed a complaint against Dark and Darker under the "Unfair ComPetition & Trade Secrets Protection Act", while requesting a "deeper investigation" due to Dark and Darker's growing popularity.

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