Dark and Darker fans are worried about the future of their beloved multiplayer dungeon crawler, wondering what could happen if Nexon successfully sues developer Ironmace. This comes as the legal situation surrounding Dark and Darker's development bleeds into the United States, with Nexon suing Ironmace and two individual developers, continuing from action taken in South Korea.
While it's clear that neither side is going down without a fight, fans aren't sure what will become of Dark and Darker if Ironmace loses the case. From fears that fighting the case will drain the studio's resources, to the prospect of the devs being legally barred from releasing Dark and Darker altogether, players are debating what would happen if Nexon wins - and it's bad news for anyone who enjoyed the recent playtest.
"If Nexon wins the lawsuit, what then?" asks Reddit user BotGiyenAdam, over in r/DarkAndDarker. "Are they gonna say...'shut down the game, everything goes to the garbage. There are no more Dark and Darker'. Or 'now we make/release [a] new Dark and Darker-ish game?'"
The thread is full of ideas on what could happen if Nexon wins the case, and none of them are particularly great for Ironmace.
"Ironmace explodes," says 20charaters. "People will play Dark and Darker on third-party servers, Nexon will make a similar game - but won't get much from it."
Some fans are a bit more optimistic. "They could just ask for a certain percentage of earnings, a massive settlement amount or even control company resources," says nipzx.
Others, however, are preparing for the worse: "Nexon nixes the whole project and it's dead in the water while they make P3 again."
P3 is the project at the centre of all of this. It all stems from the fact that several Ironmace developers were working at Nexon, creating a game called P3. According to Nexon, these same employees stole ideas and source code from the project, and then left to create Dark and Darker on their own.
Ironmace has always maintained its innocence, and gave its own side of the story yesterday. According to Ironace's legal team, P3 had long been scrapped before the developers left Nexon. They also deny using assets they created while at Nexon. According to their lawyers, police have already raided the developer's homes in search of stolen assets "multiple" times, but found nothing.
Nexon is yet to respond to these claims, and may simply wait until the case is heard in court. As for now, Dark and Darker is still off Steam, and it's not clear how Ironmace will release the game as it had intended later this year.