The game Darker and Darker has been removed from Steam after its developer Ironmace received a cease and desist lawsuit from Korean publisher Nexon.
Players initially noticed that some changes had been made to the Steam page, and that videos and screenshots had been removed. Shortly after, the official online version of the title was disabled, and eventually the entire page on Steam completely disappeared from the title. Currently, if you try to load the dark and darker steam page, it will take you back to the main steam page.
“To all our fans: We recently received a cease-and-desist and legal claim from Nexon of Darkness and Darkness,” Ironmace confirmed in a tweet on the game’s official Discord, in which its Elitaeus claimed that this lawsuit was based on “false facts.”
“We are working with the legal team to find the best solution for this matter. Due to the sensitive legal nature of this matter, we will be careful in our communications with the parties involved.
“We ask for your understanding that we will try to get the beast back on the block as quickly as possible.”
Legal controversy surrounding the game arose last August, when a former Nexon employee was accused of stealing company data during a remote work period due to the pandemic. This employee was involved in a project codenamed “P3” and, after allegedly leaking thousands of documents to this title during development, he was fired by Nexon. The same person, along with 10 other employees in the 20-person team who worked on the Nexon P3 project, would have been working at Ironmace in the dark and darker.
Nexon accuses Ironmac of using the P3 in the prototype of the dark and dark, and the goods from this game were used in the subsequent design. According to Nexon, Dark and Dark has “great similarities to P3’s game concept, rules and art that could not have been done independently”.
