Iron Mace, the developer of Dark and Darker, may now be the "punk heroes (opens in new tab) of PC gaming," but it is also a force in the staid court of law. The studio is now hitting back at Nexon in full force, defending its games, saying that Nexon is only upset that some of its former employees have gone independent.

"Dark and Darker" exploded on Steam (open in new tab) earlier this year, but then became embroiled in a legal battle with Nexon (open in new tab), which accused the studio of using stolen code and assets to create the game. in March, the DMCA complaint forced the game off Steam (opens in new tab), Ironmace adopted the "old formula" and distributed the promised April playtest build via torrent (opens in new tab).

Now, however, Ironmace is pushing back. In a letter sent to Valve on behalf of the studio, law firm Greenberg Glusker stated that Nexon has no legal grounds to force the removal of Dark and Darker from Steam and that its claims are "nothing more than anti-competitive bullying tactics designed to put small indie companies out of business . is nothing more than an anti-competitive bullying tactic to put small indie companies out of business."

Central to Nexon's claims against Dark and Darker is the assertion that it is using code and assets stolen from a project released in 2021 as P3 (open in new tab) The P3 concept was eventually abandoned in favor of a more orthodox survival game design was adopted; although the initial screens of P3 bear an obvious resemblance to Dark and Darker, Ironmace's lawyers say it is irrelevant because P3 is "a game that Nexon never made and does not exist."

"Nexon claims to have created 'unique concepts, genres, plots, story lines, characters, and game plans,' which are hardly eligible for copyright protection. While the actual expression of a plot, story line, or character may indeed be protected, copyright does not protect concepts, genres, or 'plans. Nexon's loose treatment of what is and is not copyrightable is a theme throughout the takedown notice.

The letter alleges that Nexon is obsessed with a former employee, Choi Joo Hyun. Choi Joo Hyun apparently claims that Nexon is the one who actually "misappropriated" trade secrets. However, despite nearly two years of fighting in both criminal and civil court, no evidence against Choi has been produced.

There is plenty of legalese in the letter to bolster Ironmace's position, including citations to precedents, comparisons of codes and assets, and even references to Law & Order-style "fruit of the poisonous tree" (a theory apparently not allowed under copyright law). I am not a lawyer, but taken as a whole, it is certainly persuasive. Even more compelling from a layman's standpoint, however, are some hard truths that Ironmace's lawyers state about the fantasy genre and video games in general.

"Medieval-style fantasy dungeon crawlers have a limited universe of plausible assets from which they can reasonably choose," the letter daggers at my heart. There's a reason that almost every game that has explored this genre has featured reanimated skeletons, trolls, spiders, and other usual dungeon dwellers." It is not noteworthy that game designers choose some of the same "scènes à faire" assets when building such games."

("Scènes à faire" (open in new tab) is a term used to describe scenes in a creative work that are almost mandatory because of its genre, such as a fireball spell in a fantasy video game. It is also the principle that U.S. copyright law excludes such elements from copyright protection. After all, according to the letter, Nexon does not like its former employees doing their own work, especially if that "work" is making a big splash on an idea they rejected. However, according to the letter, it is Nexon that is actually breaking the rules, not Iron Mace.

"Given the absence of any legitimate copyright infringement claim, Nexon's takedown notice contains willful and material misrepresentations that Dark and Darker infringes Nexon's copyright interests in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 512(f). We respectfully request that Valve not give in to Nexon's threats and respect the creative ingenuity of a young game studio that has brought to life a product already beloved by hundreds of thousands of fans eager to see the next chapter in Dark and Darker."

The issuance of a DMCA counter-notice will either bring Dark and Darker back to Steam fairly soon or, more likely, begin a process that could involve the courts.

According to Copyright Alliance (opens in new tab), "After receiving a counter-notice, the service provider is obligated to forward that counter-notice to the person who sent the original removal notice. "Once the service provider receives a valid DMCA counter-notification, it must wait 10 to 14 days. If the copyright owner files a lawsuit against the alleged infringer within that period, the material will remain down, but if no lawsuit is filed, the service provider must reactivate or allow access to the alleged infringing activity.

The latest Dark and Darkest playtest was completed, and while Ironmace was praised for making it happen despite the outage, the test itself was not particularly smooth (opens in new tab).

"The technical quality was not up to our standards and we will work to improve it for the future," Ironmace said in a message posted on the Dark and Darker Discord server (opens in new tab)." We were also the target of endless DDoS attacks and we are sorry that it affected you. We will investigate solutions to mitigate these issues in the future."

The April playtest was supposed to be the last playtest before Dark and Darker went into early access, but Ironmace indicated on Twitter that there will be more playtests, as is understandable under the circumstances.

We have contacted Ironmace, Valve, and Greenberg Glusker for more information and will update if we hear back.