Dark and Darker dev claims Nexon's preliminary injunction has been dismissed, court rules that the game 'cannot be considered an infringement of Nexon's copyright or trade secret'

First reported by TheGamer, a member of Dark and Darker developer Ironmace has stated on the game's Discord that they have achieved an early victory in staving off Maplestory publisher Nexon's copyright lawsuit, with a South Korean court dismissing the publisher's preliminary injunction.

I've put a full timeline of the Dark and Darker saga below this article, but for a quick refresher: the indie hack n' slash extraction shooter was a breakout hit in the 2023 Steam Next Fest, but this victory was quickly followed by a massive legal challenge from Nexon. 

Nexon sued developer Ironmace and got the game taken off Steam via a DMCA notice to Valve. Nexon claims that Ironmace (which largely consists of former Nexon devs) poached talent from the publisher and illegally used assets from a canceled dungeon crawler project begun at Nexon. Ironmace, naturally, denies these accusations, claiming that no project P3 assets directly made their way into Dark and Darker.

I have reached out to Nexon for a statement, but this sounds like a substantial victory for Ironmace. According to the Ironmace developer sdf, who shared the Korean-language statement to Discord, the court ruled that «Iron Mace's game cannot be considered an infringement of Nexon's copyright or trade secret.»

Notably, sdf also makes reference to a «disappointing» ruling by the court regarding unfair competition, but it's not immediately clear what the nature of that ruling is. Sdf claims that Nexon has yet to submit evidence from the canceled project at the heart of the lawsuit.

The story seems far from over, assuming Nexon choses to continue pursuing this lawsuit, but in theory the dismissal of the preliminary injunction could pave the way for Dark and Darker's return to Steam: sdf stated that «the court ruled that Dark and Darker's service should not be suspended based on Nexon's claims and evidence alone.» Until then, you can still play Dark and Darker in early access via Ironmace's own launcher.