The legal battle between Dark and Darker developer Ironmace and game publisher Nexon has become increasingly fraught as confusion over the weekend’s GoFundMe campaign leaves fans scratching their heads.
For context, Dark and Darker is a dungeon crawling PvPvE game by developer Ironmace. Last month, the company received a suspension notice and a DMCA takedown notice that caused content to be removed from his Steam page for the game. Due to legal issues, Dark and Darker’s upcoming public playtests are in question.
Ironmace is in a legal battle with Nexon. Nexon is the publisher where about half of his 20-person team at Ironmace used to work. Nexon alleges that Iron Mace is illegally using Nexon’s code in the development of Dark and Darker. Iron Mace’s offices were searched by South Korean authorities over allegations that the company may have stolen code and assets from Nexon, but Iron Mace later said “nothing was found.”
Iron Mace employee posts GoFundMe for legal costs
Things got even weirder over the weekend. On the Dark and Darker Discord server, the Ironmace developer known as Luci posted a lengthy announcement about the legal battle.The letter has since been deleted from the server, but the screenshot is PC gamer and Reddit post saved it.
At the beginning of his message, Luci admitted that the Ironmace leadership (two specific members known in Discord as Terence and sdf) were unaware he was posting. The developer continued to accuse Nexon of running Ironmace and trying to make money.
“We’re not a big studio, and we’re not infinitely funded like Nexon,” Rusi wrote. “The reality of the situation is that their ultimate goal is to drain us out of court costs. Internally, we know this. They know this. Lawyers know this.” We fold. Our concern is not the false claim that they were duped into being fed to all media outlets. Our game was created from scratch. I worry if I can sustain myself through this legal battle that is trying to drag us down…”
The message said it asked members of the Dark and Darker Discord to help Ironmace “through this bull” and set up a GoFundMe so fans could donate to Ironmace’s legal costs. According to PC Gamer, the GoFundMe raised over $46,000 in less than an hour before it was taken down.
After Ironmace suspends campaign due to GoFundMe legitimacy question, another Discord announcement says Luci’s account may be in jeopardy, fans donating without confirmation from Terence or sdf Later on Friday, members of the Dark and Darker Discord questioned whether the first page of the GoFundMe was actually posted by Ironmace employee Luci, or whether the account had been compromised. I wasn’t sure yet.
Finally, a post on the Community Announcements channel shed light on the Dark and Darker GoFundMe, which turned out to be the first post from Luci. was Justified. Ironmace’s admin, her Graysun, posted an announcement revealing the company was working on her GoFundMe, but Luci apparently took matters into her own hands and posted early without approval. It seems that.
“The GoFundMe link is legitimate, but was supposed to be used later as needed,” Graysun wrote. “Posted without approval this morning as a dedicated member of our team took matters into their own hands. We are currently pausing the campaign for being prematurely announced… How GoFundMe We will make another announcement about what will happen.
yesterday, The Self-Defense Forces further cleared things up“Previous fundraising was legitimate, but not at the time we planned.”
“All requests for donations to IRONMACE are fraudulent, except officially me or Terry asking you for help,” the SDF wrote. “Beware of scams that exist online and never donate. Please do not, our official fundraising page is currently suspended until further notice, so any public donation page should be considered a scam. We will announce it when it is. We are very sorry for the confusion caused by our mistake.”
The campaign’s goal was set at $500,000 before being canceled.
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over 6 years of experience in the games industry and has bylines for IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.
