Dark and Darker dev says there's "nothing to worry about" following police raid over 'stolen' code claims

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"It was a quick process and nothing was found"

Four adventurers journey into a dim dungeon
(Image credit: Ironmace)

Dark and Darker developer Ironmace has responded to a report that police raided the studio following stolen code accusations from another developer called Nexon. Addressing the matter on Discord, one developer has said that the police did come, though "it was a quick process, and nothing was found".

South Korean news agency Yonhap News initially reported that a search warrant against the developer had been approved. Word swiftly reached the game's subreddit, with fans translating the report into English.

"Do not worry too much about what you hear regarding Nexon," one user from IronMace called Garysun says. "Most of what you will see on the internet is not accurate. There will be no delay in development, and there is nothing to worry about."

Aside from that, IronMace is mainly pointing fans toward a previously supplied statement issued when news of Nexon's accusations first broke. If you've been out of the loop, Nexon is reportedly contemplating legal action against Iron Mace as several staffers once worked on a project for the publisher called Project P3, which featured several commonalities with Dark and Darker. 

"I want to address certain rumours that have started to circulate and reassure Dark and Darker fans that absolutely no stolen assets or code were used to make our game," CEO Terence Seung-ha said at the time.

"Our code was built from scratch. Most of our assets are purchased from the Unreal marketplace. All other assets and all game design docs were created in-house. This has already been audited by an outside agency. 

"As far as we know you cannot copyright a game genre. Regarding the lawsuit, we consider it a separate personal matter claimed by one of our team members. No lawsuit has been filed against Ironmace."

Meanwhile, IronMace has announced another Dark and Darker playtest in April with "some pretty substantial additions".

Iain Harris
Iain Harris
News Editor, Games

I joined GamesRadar+ in May 2022 following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When I'm not running the news team on the games side, you'll find me putting News Editor duties to one side to play the hottest JRPG of 20 years ago or pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new cloak – the more colourful, the better.