Dark and Darker developer Ironmace has denied theft accusations in a statement published to the game’s official Discord server, declaring “ABSOLUTELY NO stolen assets or code” were used to create the upcoming fantasy-themed extraction shooter.
The rumors started last week when Korean gaming news site This Is Game wrote that the Korea-based Ironmace consisted of former Nexon employees who were caught trying to steal assets and code for a canceled Nexon project known as P3. That project was reportedly canceled in 2021, around the same year Ironmace was founded.
Screenshots of the canceled P3 project do look similar to Dark and Darker, but Ironmace states that the assets, code, and game design documents used in the PvP-focused dungeon crawler were either built from scratch or purchased from the Unreal marketplace.