After the recent hacking attack, the developers of Dark and Darker have received another major blow. This time, IRONMACE faces charges of stealing assets from a Korean developer.
Still in development, Dark and Darker has already won the hearts of gamers on Steam. IRONMACE’s game has gone through several rounds of testing on Valve’s platform, each time attracting a growing audience.
Dark and Darker may face an uphill battle
A community favorite, the dungeon crawler has been facing a number of issues lately. First, during recent tests, the game’s infrastructure was attacked by hackers, which prevented players from connecting to the servers.
Now, in turn, the developers of Dark and Darker must defend themselves against serious accusations. This is because it has been suggested that in the game of IRON illegally used assets belonging to another developer.
This information was first reported by Korean website This Is Game, who pointed out that some of the materials used in dark and darker can belong to the studio Nexon.
The charges seem serious.
The stolen assets, according to This Is Game, are believed to be from Nexon’s project under the working name “P3”, which was announced in 2021.. Still in the early stages of work, the game underwent a transformation at some point, changing its name to “P7”. This, in turn, would result in the dismissal of several employees.
According to Nexon Vice President Dae-Hwon Kim (via mxdwn.com), the terminated employees are currently developers at IRONMACE, who allegedly “illegally used materials and assets that Nexon was working on.”
Interestingly, mxdwn.com points to an interesting note contained on the official IRONMACE website, which states:
“We have seen with our own eyes how game companies sell their souls for easy money. We are disappointed to see more and more exploitative practices, turning games into casinos instead of bringing joy to players.”
At this time, we do not know if Nexon will take legal action against IRONMACE. The Dark and Darker devs have yet to address the This Is Game article. All we know is that they intend to focus on game development. On the brand’s official discord channel, users are discussing the issue, but so far no response has been seen from the developers.
Dark and Darker is set to debut in Early Access on Steam in late April or early May this year. The release of the full version, on the other hand, is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2023.