PvPvE dungeon crawler Dark and Darker has been booted from Steam amid allegations of stolen code

We shed a light on it back in February during the Steam Next Fest demo event Dark and darker, a first-person PvPvE dungeon crawler from developer Ironmace in which opposing teams of players explored a dungeon, slaying monsters, finding treasure and escaping with the goods while potentially getting into battles with the opposing side. It turns out there’s a lot more to this game’s development path than meets the eye in the form of a source of corporate-level drama that eventually led to the title being scrapped from Steam.

According to a translated This Is Game article on Reddit, as well as coverage from MMO Fallout, Dark and darker bears an extremely close resemblance to an early codenamed Nexon game project Project P3, which was first premiered by Nexon during a media presentation in August 2021. By March 2022, the project’s focus shifted from medieval fantasy to modern firearms and survival, and the codename was changed to Project P7but the assumption is that developers of the P3 Left project to form Ironmace and continue development P3 concept into play Dark and darker.

This leads to events that happened over the weekend when the game was taken down from Steam due to a DMCA takedown lawsuit, while a cease and desist letter was served on Ironmace. Other Reddit reports spread unsubstantiated rumors that South Korean police raided Ironmace studios to gather materials related to the game, while Nexon allegedly accused Ironmace developers of spending time on work P3 search for investors, develop Dark and darkerand then left Nexon to found the studio.

Ironmace posted a statement regarding the affair on the game’s Discord:

With all the drama leaving the game’s status up in the air, angry fans began review bombing MapleStory On Steam, players have to argue over whether the title had stolen assets or used marketplace materials, and we’re all left with nothing Dark and darker was promising. At least for now.

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