One of last year’s more distinct stories was related to the medieval fantasy PvPvE extraction RPG Dark and Darker and megacorp Nexon: Readers may remember that Ironmace’s game was removed from Steam as a result of stolen code allegations from Nexon, which unsurprisingly morphed into a copyright infringement lawsuit. We’re still a long away from a resolution to that legal matter, but Ironmace posted an announcement about the matter this past Friday on Discord, alerting fans that a preliminary injunction filed by Nexon against Ironmace was dismissed.
Details on the injunction were not shared by Ironmace, but it does state (via Google Translate) that it was dismissed by the court on the grounds that the RPG “cannot be considered an infringement of Nexon’s copyright or trade secret” and that service for Dark and Darker should not be suspended – an allusion to the fact that the game may return to Steam, or at least that it can continue to be sold directly.
While Ironmace crows about the legal victory and continues to claim that Dark and Darker wasn’t made with stolen code, it does express disappointment that a decision regarding unfair competition wasn’t reached, primarily because evidence about stolen could only be used in the main lawsuit, which does look to be moving forward through the legal process. Still, Ironmace is confident in its innocence, writing, “If a sufficient and thorough investigation of evidence is conducted in the main lawsuit, the truth about the unfairness of Nexon’s claims and the innocence of Ironmace will be revealed.”
