The great medieval action hope Dark and Darker was supposed to be the next Steam hit. Now there’s been a police raid on the developers’ home
Dark and Darker looks to be the next big indie hype game on Steam. The dungeon crawler focuses on PVP battles with knights, rogues and mages who have to sneak through dark dungeons in the best Escape From Tarkov style, collect loot and find an extraction point at the end with their loot.
After four enormously successful playtests, in which more than 100,000 players were online at the same time, the Korean developers are now threatened with legal problems. According to media reports, there was even a first house search in the studios.
This is what is behind the police operation
What happened? As (Yonhap News) reported, there was reportedly a police raid at Ironmace Studios’ corporate headquarters in the South Korean city of Seongnam.
Why did this happen? The studio is accused of data theft by publisher Nexon. Many of the studio’s employees, including Ironmace CEO Seung-ha Park, previously worked as developers at Nexon.
During this time, Park allegedly leaked game files and assets, and shortly afterwards resigned from Nexon along with most of the Project P3 team. Due to the leak and the lack of developers, Nexon had to shut down the game.
Dark and Darker, which actually bears great similarities to Project P3, is said by Nexon to be based on the stolen files. Back in 2021, the publisher filed a complaint for unfair competition.
Ironmace, meanwhile, denies all allegations that all of Dark and Darker’s assets were either created in-house or purchased from the Unreal Store.
What’s next? According to Yonhap News, the raid took place on 8 March 2023. Police are now said to be comparing the data obtained with Project P3 data leaked to authorities by Nexon.
Currently, Dark and Darker is planning a final, fifth playtest for next month. After that, the dungeon crawler is to enter Early Access on Steam. Whether this will happen or the authorities will put a stop to the developers remains to be seen.
