IRONMACE’s founder, who started the company in 2021, was also working on the P3 project. Reportedly, Nexon was working on a project named ‘P3’, and in 2021, a member of staff working on the team leaked ‘thousands of files’ related to the in-development game.

It started with accusations, and it culminated in a DMCA claim being issued against IRONMACE. Bad Press Gets Worse Image Credit: IRONMACE Now, every trace of Dark and Darker has been stripped clean from Steam. However, things turned sour following a police raid on IRONMACE’s studios that took place in response to a claim of theft made by Nexon, a Japanese-South Korean studio. There were even talks regarding a console port of the game, which is something that is a mere pipedream for Escape From Tarkov, arguably the game’s biggest potential competitor. There was another playtest due to be held in April, and ultimately, the game was scheduled to release in full towards the end of 2023. Like Escape From Tarkov, the objective in Dark and Darker is to enter a dungeon, loot as much as possible, complete tasks, fight other players and AI opponents, and successfully leave the map. It was in February that the game hit an all-time peak viewer count of more than 265,000 users.Īs a hardcore PvPvE game, Dark and Darker pits players against an unforgiving range of environments, with one key goal: survive.

On TwitchTracker, figures show consistently rising viewership numbers across the early access playtests that took place in October, November, January, and February. Dark and Darker Removed and Gone Darkįor the most part, Dark and Darker was enjoying steady growth with each successive playtest. Following scathing claims that the developer had stolen code from Nexon, IRONMACE’s studios were raided by police, and that’s where the issues kicked off in earnest. Since the tail end of 2022, Dark and Darker has been transitioning through testing phases, but following some remarkably bad press, the game’s developer, IRONMACE, has stripped all traces of the title from Steam, the only platform that was hosting it.ĭark and Darker, which was offering a unique spin on the ‘extraction shooter’ genre popularised by the likes of Escape From Tarkov, has suffered immeasurably under the weight of negative news in recent weeks. For the gamers that were hungry for a (deep breath) ‘hardcore fantasy FPS dungeon PvPvE adventure’, Dark and Darker was the perfect game.

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