Nexon aims to shut down ‘Dark And Darker’ with new lawsuit

Ironmace, the developer behind multiplayer action game Dark And Darker, has been sued by Nexon over claims it created the game with stolen assets and code.

Earlier in the year, MapleStory publisher Nexon accused Ironmace of creating Dark And Darker with stolen materials from the company.

On Friday (April 14), Nexon filed a lawsuit naming Ironmace at a district court in Washington. The lawsuit lists Ironmace founder Terence Park and one of his employees as defendants, and points out that the pair are former Nexon employees.

During their time at Nexon, the defendants worked on a now-cancelled game called P3, and Nexon has alleged that stolen code from the project is now being used to develop Dark And Darker.

“In flagrant breach of their obligations to Nexon, the individual defendants stole P3 source code, audiovisual, and other materials that Nexon developed through a substantial expenditure of time and money,” reads the suit, as detailed in the below video (via Rock Paper Shotgun).

Nexon added that those materials, which were found on one defendant’s personal servers, were used “to develop a substantially similar video game called ‘Dark And Darker’“.

“Condoning defendants’ conduct would threaten Nexon, the video game industry, and all of the consumers who enjoy playing sophisticated video games,” the suit continued.

“Video game developers would not be able to invest years’ worth of person-hours in developing video games if their employees could simply transfer their employer’s project files to their personal servers and start a new company to exploit their employer’s investment and creative work for themselves.”

The lawsuit aims to prevent Ironmace from continuing to develop Dark And Darker, while Nexon is also seeking an undisclosed amount of compensation and any “ill-gotten gains” the studio has made from Dark And Darker.

Ironmace has denied Nexon’s allegations and claimed “no copyrighted materials or misappropriated trade secrets were used” by the studio.

In a statement published last month, Ironmace also denied stealing materials from P3, and argued the defendant only had P3 files on their personal servers to “improve the performance of his team” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nexon’s legal action has already seen the game removed from Steam, leading to Ironmace releasing Dark And Darker‘s latest playtest through torrenting.