Police have raided one of the Dark and Darker developers’ local offices. The Korean team calms the situation down and makes sure everything is under control. However, conflicting information on the subject is surfacing online.
According to koreajoongangdaily, one of IRONMACE’s local offices was “raided by police” on Tuesday.
During the intervention at the office located in Seongnam, it was said that the police had seized company documents related to the next dark and darker.
Mutually exclusive versions of events
The media and the Internet are full of mutually exclusive information on the subject. The koreajoongangdaily report is only one available version. For example, IRONMACE claims that while the raid was a fact, officers “didn’t find anything” and that the raid itself was supposed to have ended as quickly as it began.
Asset theft and response
The police raid on IRONMACE is not particularly surprising in itself: it follows accusations against the Korean studio, or more precisely, one of its employees.
Recall that another Korean company, NEXON, accused IRONMACE of using illegal assets and assets held by NEXON..
According to the accusers, one of his former high-ranking employees stole NEXON’s assets before he was fired, which were then used to create Dark and Darker.
Interestingly, the allegations of illegal asset use were dismissed by IRONMACE President Terence Seung-ha. which, via Discord, pointed out that most of them were purchased from the Unreal Engine Marketplace, with the rest being “created in-house”.
Source: IRONMACE.
The CEO of IRONMACE, however, admitted in passing on Discord that there is a lawsuit between NEXON and one of the studio’s employees. He emphasized that this is a private matter and that no legal action has been taken against IRONMACE..
Mysterious Leader A
The legal dispute between NEXON and the IRONMACE employee is said to have been ongoing since August 2022 (via koreajoongangdaily). It was then that the police referred the case to the Suwon District Prosecutor’s Office, which in turn decided in December to continue the investigation.
According to the koreajoongang daily, Nexon’s legal team issued a statement to employees yesterday, shedding light on the alleged theft of assets.
NEXON representatives do not want to reveal the identity of the IRONMACE employee involved in the case, so they refer to him as “Leader A” in their communications.
“Leader A, then team leader of the P3 project, caused thousands of files, including source code and builds mainly related to the development of the project, to be leaked to an external server belonging to him. We found out that Leader A also suggested his teammates leave. company and work together on a game similar to P3.”
Ultimately, it should be noted that IRONMACE has made sure throughout that dealing with the allegations made by NEXON will have no impact on the eventual release of Dark and Darker.
However, the situation seems to be changing. If further details emerge, we will let you know as soon as possible.