Ironmace says a court has dismissed its former publisher Nexon’s request for an injunction following the publisher’s claim that Dark and Darker has been written with stolen code from a game the team had been developing for Nexon.
In a statement to players on its Discord server, an Ironmace developer – known as SDF – reported that a court has dismissed Nexon’s injunction for “trade secret and copyright infringement”, “thus rejecting the claims and suspicions that Dark & Darker was developed by using Nexon’s trade secrets and infringing on its copyrights”.
The court also reportedly ruled that Dark and Darker’s service “should not be suspended based on Nexon’s claims and evidence alone”, paving a potential return to Steam for the game.
“Nexon’s request for a preliminary injunction against Ironmace for trade secret and copyright infringement was dismissed,” Ironmace’s SDF wrote in a statement that was posted to the official Discord server and translated from Korean via Google Translate.
“The court ruled that ‘Ironmace’s game cannot be viewed as infringing on Nexon’s copyright or trade secrets’, thus rejecting the claims and suspicions that Dark and Darker was developed by using Nexon’s trade secrets and infringing on its copyrights. It wasn’t. In addition, the court ruled that Dark & Darker’s service should not be suspended based on Nexon’s claims and evidence alone.”
SDF says that Nexon did not enter its own game, codenamed P3, as evidence, even though Nexon alleges Dark and Darker was developed from P3’s code, but admitted the court’s decision about Nexon’s unfair competition claim was “disappointing”.
“The court’s decision regarding unfair competition is disappointing in that it came from a situation where Nexon did not even submit the P3 game itself as official evidence, SDF added.
“However, this is due to the limitations of evidence examination in the provisional injunction procedure, and according to the provisional injunction decision, one of the reasons why the court dismissed Nexon’s application for a provisional injunction was the need for a faithful investigation of evidence and hearing in the main lawsuit.