Dark and Darker, the hardcore dungeon-crawling medieval fantasy extraction game, has finally obtained an official publisher, following a months-long legal battle. A developer from Ironmace Games, the developer of the title, has confirmed recently that the game will be published by Chaf Games, a PC indie games publisher. The revelation came from the Dark and Darker’s discord, wherein a developer, Graysun, has reported that Chaf Games will be taking on the helm as the official publishing partner for the game.
Dark and Darker: Release window and early access version
The initial release window for Dark and Darker was announced as Q3 of 2023 by the developer. After a lot of legal struggle, as well as an alleged police raid at the developer’s offices in Seongnam, South Korea, the developer had announced that there will be a little delay in the release of the game. Currently, the Chaf Games website cites that the game will be coming soon, however, does not offer a specific release date.
Interestingly, it is highly possible that the early access version of Dark and Darker may release on August 7, 2023. According to a YouTuber, Nazori, the official website for the game went live for a short while in the early hours of August 7. On the website, developer Graysun, who officially announced their partnership with Chaf Games, posted that the early access version will launch today. However, the website soon went dark, which is still the case at the time this article was written. Nazori claims that it’s highly possible that the early access version will launch today and we might get a release date soon.
Dark and Darker: Price and editions
Dark and Darker is now available for purchase on the Chaf Game’s website. The publisher has announced two editions for the title, named Standard Edition and Founder’s Edition. The Standard Edition of Dark and Darker is priced at $35 and includes the base version of the game, early access, and 5 Bluestone Shards.
The Founder’s Edition, priced at $50 allows players to become a ‘Trailblazer’, which enables them to download the content that will be uploaded in the future. The upcoming content is speculated to include new levels and new dungeons. The purchasers of the Founder’s edition will also gain access to new dungeons as a tester. Furthermore, buyers of this edition will also gain access to three exclusive assets, i.e. an in-game character race Skeleton, skin for an item Blue Torch, and an exclusive emote ‘Hold the Line’.
Dark and Darker: The legal struggle
The legal troubles surrounding Ironmace’s game started around February 2023. Around that time, a South Korean game developer, Nexon, had reported that Dark and Darker features various similarities to one of their ongoing projects, tentatively named P3 for internal use. The developer claimed that certain assets from the unreleased P3 project were leaked to an external server by Mr. Choi (who is allegedly posting on Dark and Darker’s Discord as SDF). Mr. Choi was serving as the team leader for the P3 project and Nexon had complained that he encouraged his teammates on the P3 project to quit the company and join him for working on a similar project independently.
Mr. Choi was fired from Nexon in August 2021 and almost half the development team for project P3 followed suit. Ironmace Games was founded by Terence Park Seung-Ha in October of 2021, who was also a part of Nexon’s P3 project. Disbanding of the P3’s development team resulted in Nexon reworking the existing work into another title, internally referred to as P7. In February 2023, Nexon accused Ironmace Games of stealing IP from the P3 project.
Ironmace denied the accusations, stating that the game was built from the ground up, using Unreal Engine 4 assets and handwritten code. They also claimed that a developer cannot copyright a genre, indicating that the new developer was only creating a game in a similar genre as P3, without using any of the P3’s assets or elements. In March 2023, Nexon issued a cease and desist notice to Ironmace, forcing them to stop the development of Dark and Darker. As a result, the game was taken down from the Steam store on March 26, 2023.
Ironmace Games, however, continued working on the title, eventually releasing the fifth playtest for the game in April 2023. The playtest was released and distributed through BitTorrent instead of the Steam Store, along with necessary patches. On the day of the release of the fifth playtest, Nexon filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement against Ironmace in the USA. Meanwhile, Ironmace’s repeated requests to Steam to bring their title back online were ignored, resulting in a need for the developer to seek out another publisher.
Source: Chaf Games
