Developer Ironmace has been issued a cease-and-desist from publishing company Nexon, and it has a lot to do with its alpha title Dark and Darker.

The first-person dungeon crawler roguelike battle royale hybrid has been getting a lot of attention, good and bad. The latter is from Nexon, which prompted Ironmace to remove the RPG game from Steam.

Why Was Dark And Darker Removed From Steam?

Because Nexon accused Ironmace of stealing game code for a project entitled P3, which is similar to Dark And Darker. Members of Ironmace were allegedly involved in the development of P3.

While Ironmace denied the allegations, the company was raided by Korean police in early March. This led to the game being delisted on Steam on 25 March. Here’s the official statement from Ironmace:

“To all our fans, we have recently been served a cease and desist letter and DMCA takedown by Nexon regarding Dark and Darker based on distorted claims. We are currently working with our legal team to remedy this issue in the best manner possible. Due to the sensitive legal nature of this issue we must be careful with our statements so as to not jeopardize our position.

We ask for your understanding as we work to get the game back up as quickly as possible. Please know that we will do all that is possible for our fans.”

Dark and Darker was a hit on Steam even in its free demo test phase; the game peaked at over 100,000 concurrent players per day. For more Dark and Darker, check out our past writeups. We hope these troubles are over soon and the game pops back up in some shape or form.