2 years after Dark and Darker was first pulled from Steam, Korean court rules that developer Ironmace must pay Nexon $5.87 million for trade secret infringement

The long legal battle between Korean megapublisher Nexon and Dark and Dark studio Ironmace appears to have come to a conclusion today. A South Korean court has ruled that Ironmace must pay Nexon 8.5 billion won - around $5.87 million USD - in damages over trade secret infringement.

Several developers at Ironmace, including CEO Terence Park Seung-ha, previously worked at Nexon on an unreleased game that was tentatively titled Project P3 - a project that Nexon argues was quite similar to the game Dark and Darker ended up being. Nexon filed suit against Ironmace in 2021 - years before Dark and Darker had become a breakout hit on Steam - accusing the studio of both copyright infringement and trade secret infringement.

In today's ruling, Ironmace and Dark and Darker have been cleared of copyright infringement, but the court is on Nexon's side when it comes to the claim of trade secret infringement, according to an English-language report from Korean news outlet ChosunBiz.

This all appears to be separate from the lawsuit we reported on in 2023, which was filed by Nexon in the US and soon dismissed with a court ruling that South Korea would be a more "appropriate" venue for the case. Nonetheless, the game was pulled from Steam around the time of the US lawsuit and only returned to Valve's platform in 2024.

Despite Dark and Darker's early success, players have been mixed on its current Early Access incarnation - literally "mixed," as the 64% positive Steam reviews would put it. While the core gameplay is still widely praised, there's no shortage of players unhappy about how the game's overzealous anti-cheat efforts or the way the developers are going about implementing updates.

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