The legal battle between publishing giant Nexon and a small group of former Ironmace employees who left the company to make their own game is only going to get uglier, as Ironmace's Dark and Darker is using code and concepts from its own cancelled "P3" project. Nexon's claims of illegal use of the concept (opens in new tab) have so far resulted in a police raid on Ironmace's Korean studio (opens in new tab) and the official removal of the "Dark and Darker" Steam page.

Ironmace is fighting this claim this week by releasing its own evidence (opens in new tab) that Dark and Darker was developed from scratch and uses assets purchased from the Unreal library. whether Nexon will file suit against Ironmace Whether or not, it is unlikely that a judgment will be rendered without months of expensive legal proceedings.

Today, Luci, Ironmace's administrator at Discord's Dark and Darker, issued an open letter about the intentionally stressful legal battle, without consulting Ironmace leadership, and the large corporation's attempt to outlast its smaller competitor economically and detailed what they believe to be an attempt to "make the small competitors more financially viable.

The post included a link to a GoFundMe page, presumably intended to raise legal fees and allow Ironmace to continue development of Dark and Darker, but in a strange turn of events, the post was temporarily Deleted. As of this writing, the letter has been deleted again and the GoFundMe page has been removed. The page went live in less than an hour and raised over $46,000.

"We're not a big studio, and we don't have unlimited funds like Nexon does," said the letter. As a practical matter, their ultimate goal is to exploit us for court costs." Internally, we know this, they know this, and their lawyers know this."

Minutes after the letter was reposted, a junior moderator named Mellie-Mellow asked fans not to donate to the GoFundMe, as she could not confirm that the letter was legitimate.

The moderator closed the server's general and off-topic chat channels until the situation was resolved. About two hours after the incident, an Ironmace administrator named Graysun confirmed that the open letter and the now-deleted GoFundMe page were legitimate (open in new tab).

"Due to the premature announcement, we are currently suspending the campaign. We appreciate the tremendous outpouring of support we have received in such a short amount of time." We are very sorry for the disruption and will take appropriate steps to resolve this issue within the next few hours, and we will make another announcement as to how the GoFundMe will be handled."

Before the campaign was suspended, its goal had been set at $500,000. Administrator Luci's deleted open letter can be read below.