A developer for Ironmace stated in a Discord post that the lawsuit that shut their game down has been dismissed.
Dark and Darker Nexon Lawsuit Dismissed
Many months ago, back in March 2023, the highly successful dungeon crawler RPG was removed from steam. After receiving a Cease and Desist from their former developers/company, Nexon, Dark and Darker was removed from the massive gaming library publisher Steam. You can read more about the drama leading up to the cease and desist at this article here. This caused the developers to try and release versions and updates of the game on their own. By having fans download the game via torrent. It was just announced that the lawsuit that brought their game offline has been dismissed.
Official Announcement
In a statement to their players in the official Dark and Darker Discord a letter to the fans reads as follows.
“Dear players,
Yesterday, Nexon’s preliminary injunction against Iron Mace for trade secret and copyright infringement was dismissed. The court ruled that “Iron Mace’s game cannot be viewed as infringing on Nexon’s copyright or trade secrets,” thus rejecting the claims and suspicions that Dark & Darker was developed by using Nexon’s trade secrets and infringing on its copyrights.
It wasn’t. In addition, the court ruled that Dark & Darker’s service should not be suspended based on Nexon’s claims and evidence alone. The court’s decision regarding unfair competition is disappointing in that it came from a situation where Nexon did not even submit the P3 game itself as official evidence.
However, this is due to the limitations of evidence examination in the provisional injunction procedure, and according to the provisional injunction decision, one of the reasons why the court dismissed Nexon’s application for a provisional injunction was the need for a faithful investigation of evidence and hearing in the main lawsuit. If a sufficient and thorough investigation of evidence is conducted in the main lawsuit, the truth about the unfairness of Nexon’s claims and the innocence of Iron Mace will be revealed. Despite many difficulties, we were able to persevere thanks to the support and support of players around the world. We will continue to invest and do our best to develop Dark & Darker into a solid game that can be serviced for more than 10 years. I am always grateful to you all.”
Key Takeaways
The Dark and Darker lawsuit has been dismissed. The court ruled that Nexon’s trade secrets and copyright infringement claims were not valid and were dismissed. It is also reported that the court stated that Dark and Darkers service, such as being hosted on Steam, “should not be suspended based on Nexon’s claims and evidence alone.” This leads to the potential hope of a Steam return.
Nexon has not made any statement regarding the case being dismissed at the time of this articles publishing.
Dark and Darker is still in early access and can be purchased via its own website. We are excited for the ongoing development and commitment to this game and look forward to its future full release. We will continue to cover Dark and Darker news which you can read here. And lastly you can catch all gaming news and guides here. Happy gaming!