this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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It was on Steam, up until Nexon sued them because they suspected stolen assets were used.
So far it doesn't look like that was true, and the case that was filed in the U.S. was eventually dismissed (since it should be handled by the courts in South Korea).
So hopefully we'll see it back in the steam store, eventually.
That's not entirely accurate. Not entirely inaccurate either.
Firstly to clarify, as for the dismissal, it's due to forum inconvienience. They had to file in Washington though due to the terms of steam that state any conflict must first be brought up in a Washington court.
Secondly, the suit was for much more than than. The assets weren't stolen and this was never an accusation. The accusation is that d.a.d used research and development created by Nexon to bypass large amount of work in order to create the game. This included the decision on what assets to use, and how to modify them to fit the game. The evidence on this is strong. This on top of abilities, classes used, weapons and fighting mechanics, magic items, animation style, etc. were one to one matches to their former employers.
We must acknowledge the founders worked for nexon previous to starting dark and darker and they worked on a game with the exact premise. This is not disputed.
Thirdly, the guy admitted to stealing company information, agreed to destroy it, and failed to do so while lying about it. They had also, in company emails, messaged other employees about quitting to start a game with the same premise while still working at nexon.
There's alot more there and honestly I don't see a world in which they're in the right. Still though, fuck nexon, trash company, trash employers. What the d.a.d devs did was wrong, but gladly they did it to a company that deserves it.
Thanks! It helps to have a lot more background and i haven't looked too deeply into this.
I was trying to keep my reply simple and directly to the point that they didn't create their own launcher just because they wanted to.
I didn't know the first point, now I'm wondering if both sides wanted it dismissed in the U.S. at least. From the article I read it sounded like this was being pushed from Ironmace's side.
I had mentioned the founder's involvement before, but only in a different reply on this same post.
On the second point, at least as far as U.S. law is concerned, I'm not so sure that this is such a straightforward case. We've already seen in previous cases with video games that it's okay for games to have the same game rules, mechanics, ideas, and principles. That's why anyone can create a game like Tetris, Monopoly, or Pokemon (such as Palworld). As long as they don't copy over assets directly, (sprites/models/verbatim text for the game rules, etc.) it's ok to create a very similar game or even to be inspired by other games. Mostly this is what I understood after listening to some YouTube attorneys that were discussing this matter for Palworld (Hoeg Law and Attorney Tom).
The difference here is that one of the founders did work for Nexon so it seems that a lot of the work was likely plagiarized (which is not illegal in the U.S. but it is unethical). It would have been interesting to see how this would play out in U.S. courts.
Do you have any idea how the courts in South Korea view cases like this?
On the third point, I had heard how they had recruited other employees, but I hadn't heard about the founder agreeing to destroy the company info and failing to do so. Do you have a link/source for that?
Thanks for the reply!
Edit: asking for source, not because I'm doubting you, I just want to read up more on it.
Never a problem, always a good thing to ask for sources. I'll admit, I've been having a fairly difficult time re-finding all the origional sources however I did get the majority of my information from a guy called Kira on youtube. He goes through the actual documents but, sadly, doesn't directly link to the docs. I'll post those links at the end
Firstly, their admittion to keeping nexons server after being told to shut it down
Taken from their post here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkAndDarker/comments/122rz27/dmca_discord_update/
Note their arguments for it being OK stem from nexon not taking action sooner, and stating they should have recognized the servers were being used during their tenure. As a developer, I should state that mirroring the entire server is uneeded and very weird to see. Usually, proxying in, using git, and their on site build servers through that proxy is the standard. Also, no, nobodies looking at access logs until there's an issue. I cannot find nexons responce directly, but it is shown in the following videos
Here's some Piped links to the coverage from Kira:
Looking over lawsuit: https://piped.adminforge.de/watch?v=42SzJLadbHg&list=PL27KYsg0ANj1YskyapNmhwVX8UdbeCuvR&index=6
Full Playlist: https://piped.adminforge.de/playlist?list=PL27KYsg0ANj1YskyapNmhwVX8UdbeCuvR
Once more on youtube if you prefer:
Looking over lawsuit: https://youtube.com/watch?v=42SzJLadbHg&list=PL27KYsg0ANj1YskyapNmhwVX8UdbeCuvR&index=6
Full Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL27KYsg0ANj1YskyapNmhwVX8UdbeCuvR
And I would've tried on the steam Deck.