Dark and Darker - Devs fucked up and get sued by their ex-employers

[Alaric the Visigoth]

I wanted to make this thread for talking about both the game and the drama surrounding the dev team. For those who aren't aware of the history of the game, Ironmace is a Korean Dev studio that made Dark and Darker, the devs originally worked for Nexon before splitting due to the dark and darker project being shelfed. They opened the game for beta testing on Steam where it received massive attention but on March 8, 2023, the police raided Ironmace's office in Seongnam, in search of evidence over allegations of copyright theft. 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. On March 26, 2023, the game was delisted from the Steam online game store after Nexon filed a DMCA notice. The devs took to Discord and wrote out their legal defence where they argued that their game was fairly used as the assets they used came from the store and using hand made code, they then asked chatGPT to describe their game and used it's answer as further defense of how generic their game was. They then launched a gofundme on their discord to shell up cash for a legal defense before the link was taken down and called a scam before another member of the dev team explained that the original link was posted by an "enthusiastic" employee. The game is now only purchasable on their website or by sending money directly to the team.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKZll_JKBvk

As of June 7th Dark and Darker has been re-released to Steam. If you previously had an account on Iron Mace's launcher you must wait before they add an option to link accounts.

edit: on June 14 they've added the ability to link accounts.

 

[Tablet County]

Marauders is better.

 

[Alaric the Visigoth]

Marauders is better.

I don't know how you could possibly compare those two games. It's like comparing Remnant to Dark Souls.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

I was wondering what happened to this game. Seemed like it had a boom of attention with the beta and then dropped off the face of the earth. Now there's Dungeonborne, which seems to be doing the same "fantasy first-person extraction looter" and had a playertest earlier this month, so things seem grim for Ironmace.

 

[Alaric the Visigoth]

so things seem grim for Ironmace.

I think it might be a case of LoL vs Dota, Both being very similar in concept but both having their own dedicated player base. I know just from talking to people in game that the player base is pretty chill

 

[POWER IN MISERY]

nexon rules. they're gonna run the whole god damn world soon. nexon is like a platonic ideal of the korean hyper-jew. any time i think of nexon offices in my head i'm picturing a building made of concrete color painted foam staffed by five foot tall spiders.

 

[Sparky Lurker]

The PvPvE dungeon crawler genre is basically the new MOBA rush that happened on the mid-2010s, before the end of 2025 we will be looking to a bunch of dead games:

 

[Alaric the Visigoth]

Necroing thread but ever since Dark and dark has been re-released on steam the game has received mixed reviews from salty players who had to pay to get the game.

 

[topsykrets]

unfun trash, been forced to play by tasteless friends, mobs are too fucking spongy.

 

[Alaric the Visigoth]

unfun trash, been forced to play by tasteless friends, mobs are too fucking spongy.

that's why I love it.

 

[Quintus]

Been playing the shit out of this ever since I saw it back on steam. Been having a lot of fun playing warlock.

 

[Alaric the Visigoth]

Been playing the shit out of this ever since I saw it back on steam. Been having a lot of fun playing warlock.

I've been having lot's of fun too, it's criminal that they launched the game without account linking setup though.

 

[4EB]

I haven't played since they added multi classing. Is the game still favoring Warlocks, and Rogues? I really like it, but trying to play high roller was absolute hell.

 

[White Male Brony]

The game WAS fun in playtest 2-3 but then it got trannyfied and it was all downhill from there.

 

[Alaric the Visigoth]

View attachment 6111913
The game WAS fun in playtest 2-3 but then it got trannyfied and it was all downhill from there.

calm your tits, its literally just an A and B gender change. They have gone all of June and have not added gay pride shit in the game, as long they keep it that way I'm happy

 

[White Male Brony]

its literally just

Why dont you suck that axewound harder?

 

[Lt. H. DuBois]

calm your tits, its literally just an A and B gender change. They have gone all of June not adding gay pride shit in the game, as long they keep is that way I'm happy

I played maybe 5 hours during the original release window before it got shut down, have they added prox chat? I remember thinking that would be a cool feature, or maybe I just didn't figure it out. I really liked the aesthetics of the game gave me first edition AD&D vibes

 

[Alaric the Visigoth]

I played maybe 5 hours during the original release window before it got shut down, have they added prox chat?

if you mean for voice chat then yeah they did.

 

[Lt. H. DuBois]

So is it considered full release now? Any different environments or bosses besides that troll?

 

[Alaric the Visigoth]

So is it considered full release now? Any different environments or bosses besides that troll?

It's still very much early access, I haven't fought any of them yet but they added a whole bunch of bosses like the Cyclops and the Ghost King as well as the Ice caves which instead of doing the Fortnite circle will just slowly freeze you to death if you wait too long.