Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 19-06-2025
Online Games Bay
Is the long forgotten Dark and Darker drama finally over? It is. At least when it comes to Epic Store.
June 17th, 2025 Epic Games sent out an email to owners of Dark and Darker:
"We removed Dark and Darker from sale on the Epic Games Store on March 5 in consideration of a court decision in Korea between Nexon and the game’s publisher, Ironmace. On November 1, 2025, we will be removing Dark and Darker from your library, at which point it will no longer be playable via the Epic Games Store."
This means that even Epic Games given up on defending the project that from a get-go seemed like tainted fruit. Just a quick reminder, developer Ironmace (formed by ex-Nexxon employees) was accused by the Korean company Nexxon of using assets and concept from the project internally called P3. The P3 project was a game set in randomly generated dungeons, while Dark and Darker is set in randomly generated dungeons - that was the first clue.
The Korean court in February 2025 gave the verdict that (despite obvious clues) Ironmace did not infringe on Nexon’s copyrights, but did infringe on trade secrets (using internally available data and knowledge). Ironmace was ordered to pay about USD 5.9 million in damages.
Is this will finally kill the game that most likely would not reach the same level of success if not for the drama? The playerbase on Steam has dwindled significantly through the past year, perhaps it is better for the project to finally end.
19-06-2025
Wargaming.net, a company behind World of Tanks and World of Warships (also World of Warplanes, but realistically who cares?) is apparently leaving Russia and Belarus.
Steam just took a stand against NFTs in the games available on the platform. Is this the first sign of getting back to normal?
Microsoft just rolled out its upgrade of their AI-based tool called Copilot. Or should I say "downgrade"? Because their users are somehow unhappy with the changes that were made, and it is another example of Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot without any reason to do it.
While the overwhelming majority of users know that you simply can’t trust the big tech companies, it is worth to remind those, who don’t why is that important to keep on your toes while you deal with them.
Cheating is serious problem for many online games, but equally serious is the lack of ways to get rid of the players that do not follow the rules. Unless you do something radical, like Last Oasis recently did.
Steam has made some poor choices in the past, and it seems like they are coming back to bite them on the backside. And it is not even funny any more.
Cyberpunk 2077, new game from CD Projekt Red studio, premiered on 10th December 2020 and, just like rest of the year 2020, it was a painful experience. Although after about 8 years in production devel...
Trainwreck, one of the more prominent Twitch streamers, just started a new platform for "content creators", called Kick and it aims to provide the best possible environment for the streamers. Sounds g...
