Steam action RPG and Diablo-inspired dungeon crawler Dark and Darker have been pulled from the platform following an alleged cease-and-desist letter from Japanese-South Korean publisher Nexon.

This follows a series of back-and-forth accusations between the two companies. In short, Nexon accused Ironmace developers Dark and Darker of stealing game code for a project called “P3”, which is supposedly similar to Steam’s dungeon crawler. Members of Ironmance were allegedly involved in the development of P3.

Ironmance was quick to deny the allegations, but according to Games Industry.biz, he was raided by Korean police in early March. On March 25, fans noticed that the game was no longer available on Steam (I verified that wasn’t the case), and a later statement on the game’s dedicated Discord server explains why.

“To all of our fans, we recently received a cease and desist letter from Nexon and the DMCA takedown regarding Dark and Darker based on distorted claims,” writes a developer named “Krapst78.” “We are currently working with our legal team to resolve this issue in the best possible way. Due to the sensitive legal nature of this matter, we must be careful in our statements so as not to jeopardize our position.

“We ask for your understanding as we work to get the game back on track as quickly as possible. Know that we will do everything we can for our fans.”

Dark and Darker exploded onto Steam in February after a free demo test, peaking at over 100,000 concurrent players per day. Described as “a hardcore and unforgiving FPS dungeon PvPvE adventure”, you are challenged to delve into the bowels of an ancient citadel and recover treasure to sell to the local merchant. Think Tomb Raider meets Diablo.

– Game News has contacted Nexon for comment and will update this page with more details.

In the meantime, though, there are plenty of other great co-op games you can try out, and the Diablo 4 beta is live if you fancy some dungeon-crawling.

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