‘Dark And Darker’ developer’s office searched by police over allegations of code theft
Update: Ironmace has responded to NME. We have added the studio’s comments to the story.
Dark And Darker developer Ironmace has reportedly been searched by police in South Korea, following Nexon‘s allegations that the studio created its medieval extraction game with stolen code.
News of the raid was reported by Korean outlet Yonhap News, which claims that an investigative team from Gyeonggi Southern Provincial Police Agency searched Ironmace’s office in Seongnam, Korea, today (March 8).
The police have reportedly seized materials related to the development of Dark And Darker, which will be used to investigate developer Nexon’s claims that Dark And Darker has been created with stolen code and assets.
In messages verified by NME, an Ironmace developer going by Graysun – one of Ironmace’s appointed admins for the game’s Discord community – confirmed that “the police did come and check,” but said “it was a quick process and nothing was found”.
“Do not worry too much about what you hear regarding Nexon,” they added. “Most of what you will see on the internet is not accurate. There will be no delay in development, and there is nothing to worry about.”
Nexon has filed a lawsuit alleging a violation of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, which has been under investigation at Seongnam’s District Prosecutor’s Office since August 2022.
It’s alleged that Ironmace includes former Nexon employees who were “disciplined and fired” by the company, and goes on to claim that the former employees are creating Dark And Darker with code that was created at Nexon.
Nexon also alleges that an unnamed former employee leaked Nexon assets while employed with the company, and urged fellow employees to quit and create a game similar to P3, a title that was in development at Nexon.
Ironmace CEO Park Terence Seung-ha denied these claims last month, stating: “Our code was built from scratch. Most of our assets were purchased from the Unreal marketplace. All other assets and all game design docs were created inhouse. This has already been audited by an outside agency. As far as you know you cannot copyright a game genre.”
“Regarding the lawsuit, we consider it a separate personal matter claimed on one of our team members,” Seung-ha continued. “No lawsuit has been filed against Iornmace. Regardless, we believe in our teammate and we look forward to the resolution of their personal matter.”
Speaking to NME, an Ironmace spokesperson said: “We only focus on our game development right now. Currently, we have no plans to respond to the media.”
In other news, Ironmace has also revealed that it can’t keep Dark And Darker‘s servers running on “game sales alone” and is looking into ways to monetise the game.
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Andy Brown
NME
