Dark and Darker has once again been pulled from the Epic Games Store due to an "ongoing legal dispute."
"Epic Games has decided to delist Dark and Darker from the Epic Games Store," developer Ironmace writes via a new Discord post. "The decision appears to be based on claims made by opposing parties in an ongoing legal dispute. We are currently working to understand the exact reasoning behind this removal."
The PvPvE extraction slasher has been at the centre of a long, long legal battle between developer Ironmace and publisher Nexon, who accused the studio of "using trade secrets and copyrighted information" to make the now-popular game. Ironmace CEO Terence Park Seung-ha and several other devs once worked at Nexon on an unannounced game that allegedly had much in common with Dark and Darker, before leaving to form their own studio, which kicked off the whole lawsuit.
More recently, Korean courts cleared Ironmace of any copyright infringement, but it did side with Nexon when it comes to the accusations of trade secret infringements, meaning Ironmace would need to pay around $5.87 million in damages.
Dark and Darker was pretty much an instant hit during 2023's playtests and Steam Next Fest's demos since it combined co-op dungeon crawling with chaotic extraction-style multiplayer where you can bully internet strangers and steal their spoils, but all the legal drama meant it was first delisted on Steam and the Epic Games Store in mid-2023. The game only returned to both storefronts last summer as a free-to-play early access release, and now, it's gone from the Epic Games Store a second time.
For now, you can still download and play the game on Steam. Here's hoping the drawn-out saga can come to a conclusion soon.
In the meantime, check out what else is on the horizon with our new games of 2025 release schedule.
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