Dark and Darker: the confusion over the alleged fundraiser

As part of the Steam Next Fest, the dungeon crawler Dark and Darker was introduced, which has been a huge hit with over 100,000 beta players at times. Since then, however, the negative headlines surrounding the game haven’t stopped: following an accusation of plagiarism and subsequent removal from the Steam Store, developer studio Ironmace has defended itself against the expulsion with a ChatGPT-supported statement.

In addition to the legal battle against South Korean publisher Nexon, which triggered DMCA allegations, the alleged fundraiser is now causing confusion. As Ironmace director Lucy wrote in an open letter “intentionally published without the knowledge of the bosses,” Nexon’s goal is to “drain the development studio with legal fees.” For this purpose, a campaign has been uploaded to the GoFundMe platform, which has already managed to raise more than $46,000 in less than an hour.

However, the fundraiser was only available for a very short period of time: shortly after the letter was posted, both the letter and the appeal for donations were cancelled. A few hours later, another official named Graysun commented on the thread: The campaign and message are real, but they were “uploaded without consent after a motivated team member took matters into his own hands.” The call for donations is currently being paused, and another announcement will follow in the next few hours on how to proceed with the GoFundMe campaign — but they’re thrilled with the “tremendous support” the studio has received in such a short time.

Additionally, Ironmace commented in detail on Nexon’s allegations: In addition to the original claim DMCA requestwhich the publisher sent to Valve, the developer’s studio absorbed one Six-page document position on the topic. Accordingly, the allegations are considered “baseless retaliation” against Dark and Darker project director Ju-Hyun Choi, who left Nexon in 2021 for Ironmace. The development studio also has a clear choice of words to accuse Nexon that such a game can’t be developed at the certain speed without the stolen assets: “The fact that big game companies like Nexon can’t develop games that fast doesn’t mean other studios can’t reach that speed.” Nexon hasn’t responded yet, but one thing is for sure, the final word in the legal dispute surrounding Dark and Darker has yet to be spoken.

source: computer games