The developers of the first-person dungeon crawlerDark and Darkerofficially deny using stolen code and assets in the upcoming game. This denial comes after a Korean gaming news site published a story alleging that indie developer Ironmace plagiarized content from the team’s previous employer.
Dark and Darkeris an upcoming first-person action RPG dungeon crawlerdeveloped by freshman studio Ironmace. Teams of adventurers explore the labyrinthine depths, gathering loot and surviving hazards, including other players, until a portal opens, allowing them to escape. The game doesn’t have a precise release date yet, but its most recent open beta test proved to be a massive hit when it went live earlier this month, propellingDark and Darkerto the top of the Steam charts. While it is Ironmace’s first game, the team behind it clearly has no shortage of game development experience.
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Last week, the Korean gaming news site This Is Game published a story alleging that Ironmace is developingDark and Darkerusing code and assets from theKorean-Japanese game publisher Nexon. Specifically, the report alleges that Ironmace’s founders are former Nexon employees who were caught trying to steal assets and code from a canceled game codenamed P3. However, Ironmace denied these allegations on the game’s official discord server, insisting thatDark and Darkercontains no plagiarized materials and saying, “This has already been audited by an outside agency. As far as we know you cannot copyright a game genre.”
Nexon reportedly canceled P3 in 2021, the same year of Ironmace’s founding. Screenshots of the canceled project also look quite similar to Ironmace’s upcoming game, and it’s not impossible that thePvPvE dungeon crawlerDark and Darkerdrew inspiration from Nexon’s canned project. However, that is not necessarily proof of plagiarism, with Ironmace stating that allDark and Darker’s assets were either made in-house or purchased legally through the Unreal Engine marketplace.
TheDark and Darkerdeveloper also denied a report from the Korean news outlet YTN stating that Nexon was suing Ironmace and that the latter company was under investigation. The studio claims that the lawsuit is a personal matter involving one of its members. Ironmace maintains that the company as a whole is not subject to any legal action.
Ironmace attributes these allegations to false rumors spread by “a disgruntled third party” and thattheDark and Darkerdeveloperis handling the matter privately. The company representative also said it will not make any further statements about the allegations for the time being. Hopefully, this means that the controversy will not impact the development of the highly anticipatedDark and Darker. Still, it may be too soon to predict how the situation will shake out.
Dark and Darkeris in development for PC.
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