Dark and Darker

Dark and Darker is a first-person hybrid between a dungeon crawler and a battle royale game, with a dark medieval fantasy setting.[3] The game blends elements from role-playing systems such as Dungeons & Dragons,[4] roguelikes, to multiplayer video games such as DayZ, and has been described as belonging to the "extraction" subgenre of battle royales.[5] Players can select one of seven character classes (fighter, barbarian, rogue, ranger, wizard, cleric, and bard).[4] The game features PvPvE (player versus player versus environment) gameplay,[6] where players engage in combat against monsters to obtain valuable items, all while remaining vigilant against potential threats from other players. The playable area gradually shrinks as the match progresses, forcing players to converge into encounters with each other. Surviving a match allows players to extract loot for future matches. If the player is killed, they lose all of their possessions and equipment.[3] If the player successfully navigates through the dungeon and survives, they can store their acquired loot in a designated storage area for future use or potential sale. The game allows players to exchange items amongst themselves using in-game currency or other valuable items.

On February 16, 2023, it was reported the South Korean video game company Nexon alleged that Dark and Darker had similarities to an ongoing development of a game that was tentatively titled as P3 internally. It alleged that P3 assets were leaked onto an external server by the unnamed project team leader for P3 and the latter suggested to their teammates to quit Nexon and work on a game similar to P3. The team leader was fired in August 2021, and was part of half of the 20-member P3 project team who would subsequently join Ironmace. Ironmace was founded by Park Seung-ha in October 2021, who was also in the P3 project team.[7][8] Since the disbandment of the P3 development team, the core of the development work was reworked into another tentatively titled game, P7.[8] Ironmace denied the allegations, stating that the game genre could not be copyrighted and the game was created from ground up using Unreal Engine assets and handmade code.[9]

On March 8, 2023, the police raided Ironmace's office in Seongnam, in search of evidence over the allegations.[8] On March 24, 2023, Nexon issued a cease and desist notice to Ironmace to pause development of Dark and Darker in relation to the allegations.[1] On March 26, 2023, the game was delisted from the Steam online game store after Nexon filed a DMCA notice.[10]

However, on April 14, 2023, Ironmace announced its fifth public playtest of the game, with the game and subsequent patches distributed through BitTorrent links instead of Steam.[9] On the same day, Nexon filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Ironmace in USA,[11] which Ironmace claimed that the issue lies between Nexon and just one Ironmace employee and it should be settled in South Korea.[12]

On April 20, 2023, Ironmace requested Steam to reinstate Dark and Darker back on its store, claiming that that copyright infringement claims by Nexon were "meritless".[13]

• Official Ironmace website