Dark and Darker Wins Copyright Battle as South Korea's Supreme Court Upholds Ruling in Ironmace's Favor

Image: Nexon and Dark and Darker (via Ironmuse)

The legal dispute between Dark and Darker developer Ironmace and gaming giant Nexon has finally come to a close, with South Korea's Supreme Court upholding a lower court ruling and dismissing appeals from both sides.

The ruling confirms that Dark and Darker does not infringe on any of Nexon's copyrights. The court found no substantial similarity between Nexon's canceled internal project, codenamed "P3," and the dungeon-crawling extraction game.

This has actually been the consistent stance of the Korean judiciary from the very first instance all the way through to the Supreme Court. So in that sense, Ironmace walked away with the most important win on the table.

That said, it was not a clean sweep. According to The Korea Times, the trade secret infringement claim did stick. Ironmace CEO Choi Ju-hyun had stored Nexon data on a personal server before founding the independent studio Ironmace, and the courts found that to be an infringement. Ironmace was ordered to pay 5.76 billion Korean won, roughly $3.87 million in damages.

However, this is actually a reduction from the 8.5 billion won that was ordered in the first instance ruling back in February 2025. Since Ironmace had already paid the original amount, the company is set to receive a refund of around 2.8 billion won.

On top of that, Ironmace's share of legal costs was reduced from 80 percent to 40 percent, and all provisional seizures placed by Nexon on Ironmace will now be lifted.

Ironmace community manager Jay addressed the situation directly on Reddit, pushing back against what he called misleading coverage in certain Korean media outlets. "Some outlets are framing this as a total defeat or claiming there are new penalties and additional damages. This is not true," Jay wrote. He clarified that the Supreme Court simply upheld the second instance ruling and dismissed all appeals.

"No new penalties. No additional payments. The copyright of Dark and Darker has been fully recognized, and the legal restrictions that have hung over us are coming off."

In its official statement, Ironmace summed things up clearly. "This ruling closes the final chapter of a long and difficult legal journey, and it means Dark and Darker can move forward with full legal certainty, no copyright concerns, no threat of service suspension."

To understand why this matters so much, a bit of backstory helps. Ironmace has been locked in a legal battle with Nexon since 2021. Nexon alleges that Choi, while leading Nexon’s internal Project P3, took source code and other data when he left and later used it to develop Dark and Darker.

In the first civil trial last year, the Seoul Central District Court ruled that Dark and Darker didn’t infringe Nexon’s copyright. That was a win for Ironmace. But the court also found that trade secrets had been violated, and ordered Ironmace to pay a hefty 8.5 billion won in damages. Not surprisingly, both companies appealed.

Dark and Darker, however, has paid the price in this battle. In early 2023, its Steam Next Fest playtest drew nearly 110,000 peak concurrent players, and things looked promising for its planned early access launch on Steam. But Nexon’s lawsuit resulted in the game being pulled from the platform entirely. Ironmace then released Dark and Darker through its own website and launcher, before finally bringing it back to Steam in June 2024.

According to SteamDB, the return sparked some buzz with about 57,000 peak players at launch, but the game hasn’t been able to regain its earlier momentum, now peaking at around 10,000 to 11,000 players in recent months.