Darker and Darker can continue development and move forward with “full legal certainty,” developer Ironmace announced, following a South Korean Supreme Court ruling that upheld a lower court’s copyright-dispute ruling and dismissed appeals from both Ironmace and Nexon in what has been a years-long legal battle.
Ironmace was founded by former Nexon employees, who Nexon accused of stealing trade secrets related to a canceled Nexon project codenamed “P3” in order to make Dark and Darker. Ironmace stated it never used stolen Nexon assets or code to create its game.
As reported by The Korea Times, last year, a court ruled Ironmace did infringe on Nexon trade secrets when Ironmace CEO Choi Ju-hyun stored Nexon data on a personal server before establishing the independent studio. The developer was ordered to pay damages, though, importantly, the court also found Ironmace not guilty of copyright infringement. An appellate court later concurred with the first court’s ruling, but lowered the amount to be paid to Nexon to 5.7 billion won, or nearly $4 million dollars. South Korea’s Supreme Court has now upheld that ruling, seemingly putting an end to issues stemming from Dark and Darker’s copyright status.
In a statement posted to the official Dark and Darker Discord server and on Reddit, Ironmace said the ruling means “there is no more danger to the online service of the game,” and that it is grateful to all the fans and players who “believed in us and stood by us through all of this.”
“The copyright of Dark and Darker has been fully recognized, and the legal restrictions that have hung over us are coming off,” the statement reads. “This ruling closes the final chapter of a long and difficult legal journey, and it means Dark and Darker can move forward with full legal certainty, no copyright concerns, no threat of service suspension.”
Back in early 2023, the first-person, PvPvE fantasy-themed extraction game climbed up Steam’s top-played charts with a free Steam Next Fest playtest ahead of an early-access launch slated for later that year. At the time, Dark and Darker saw a peak concurrent-player count of nearly 110,000 players–a promising sign that the game would find success when it officially launched.
But that success wasn’t to last. Instead of a planned Steam release, the Korean gaming giant Nexon sued Ironmace for copyright and trade-secret infringement, resulting in the game being pulled from Steam amidst the legal dispute. Though Dark and Darker did still release later that year, it was via Ironmace’s own website and launcher. It eventually came to Steam around a year later in the summer of 2024.
What’s next for Darker and Darker in the wake of its newfound legal freedom is unclear. The game has continued to receive new content and updates since launch, and even received a mobile spin-off and multiple knock-offs that looked to captalize on its temporary absence from Valve’s platform.
Dark and Darker, however, has never reclaimed the impressive momentum it had prior to its removal from Steam in 2023. Though its Steam debut in 2024 saw a peak concurrent-player count of 57,000, according to SteamDB, the game has hovered around a peak of 10-11,000 players in recent months.
