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The evidence really seems to be in Ironmace’s corner. Even if it wasn’t, the extreme lengths that Nexon has gone to thus far are catching a lot of people by surprise.
For instance, Nexon ordered a police raid on Ironmace’s HQ earlier this month, and, according to the police report (translated by PCGamer) “nothing was found.” Even though the police assured them Ironmace hadn’t stolen anything, Nexon filed the DMCA anyway and successfully got Dark and Darker delisted. Because of that DMCA, Ironmace can’t even work on Dark and Darker until dealing with a legal battle that Nexon might win since it’s got millions of dollars to throw at the situation and Ironmace doesn’t.
Furthermore, Nexon’s own DMCA notice mentions numerous copyrights, yet many of those copyrights were filed in February: several months after Ironmace’s Dark and Darker gained traction. The DMCA even includes images meant to compare classes from P3 Game and Dark and Darker, but they all look so generic that you could intentionally mislabel them and claim they were concept art for Diablo or Black Desert, and few would likely be the wiser. The DMCA notice even mentions how P3 Game and Dark and Darker are similar because they both take place in dungeons, and players have to light the way with torches. Put it all together, and parts of Nexon’s lawsuit reads as though the company is trying to copyright the very concept of a dungeon crawler.
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To make matters worse, this DMCA is the latest instance in what is becoming something of a trend with Nexon. As previously stated, the former P3 Game project lead claims he left Nexon because he was losing trust in the company. In response, Nexon assigned an Internal Audit team to investigate them and accused them of stealing project files. This was back in 2021, and the investigation, which is separate from Nexon’s lawsuit with Ironmace, is still ongoing. It’s not hard to understand why the P3 Game lead may mistrust Nexon, though it will be interesting to see if the idea of that mistrust is at all used to cultivate a potential motive for the designer’s alleged actions.
The emerging new details of this case have the internet up in arms against Nexon. Some gamers are even accusing Nexon of only copyrighting P3 Game and filing the DMCA because they were jealous of Dark and Darker’s success. I would not be surprised if Nexon is using the DMCA as a roadblock to force Ironmace into spending all of its money on legal fees instead of game development, but that is neither here nor there. The full details of this situation have not yet been revealed, and official courts will ultimately settle this matter rather than the court of public opinion.
Should Ironmace’s evidence hold up under scrutiny as much as the internet thinks it does, then ideally the company will come out of this with the time and resources needed to fund Dark & Darker and keep the promising game’s development going. At the moment, though, the game’s fate is very much up in the air, and Nexon’s public reputation may not survive this case regardless of the outcome unless some compelling new evidence in their favor is introduced.
