Dark And Darker Dev Delays Early Access Launch Amid Legal Turmoil

The extraction shooter Dark And Darker was forced off Steam weeks ago thanks to an ongoing lawsuit from Korean game company Nexon, but it seems that its promised Early Access launch will also have to wait. Developer Ironmace posted an announcement on its Discord, stating that the launch has been delayed due to unspecified difficulties.

“We truly hate not being able to communicate as freely as we usually do, however due to the sensitive nature of our current situation, we can’t divulge too much information right now,” the message reads in part. “I know this isn’t the announcement everyone wanted to hear, but we needed to let our fans know that the Early Access release has been delayed a bit.” Ironmace further promises that they’re “working on a ton of things” to get the game out as soon as possible.

As we covered previously, Dark And Darker’s legal situation stems from Nexon claiming that the project was built using stolen code and assets from a project called P3. Though Ironmace is comprised of former Nexon employees who did work on P3, the smaller company says that Nexon’s claims are false and that the gaming giant is essentially trying to trademark a video game genre.

Ironmace’s most-recent playtest was hosted on a torrent site due to the Steam removal, which the developer described as “going old-school.” However, given that Dark And Darker’s game servers reportedly cost thousands of dollars a day to maintain (via TheGamer), you have to wonder what exactly Ironmace’s long-term plan is here.