IS DARK AND DARKER FINALLY DEAD?

Is Dark and Darker finally dead?

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