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Dark and Darker: Now free to play. (www.darkanddarker.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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/

Due to a mandatory remote work policy implemented by Nexon in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the accused member received multiple written authorizations from executive members at Nexon from 2020 to 2021, allowing him to utilize an external personal server to improve the performance of his team (e.g., version control, build machine, and dedicated server). After utilizing the personal servers for almost a year, the accused member asked the leadership if it was ok to continue using his personal servers. The leaders told him to refrain from using the personal servers. The accused member agreed to takedown the servers as long as he could maintain the performance of his team by having his programming team come to the office bypassing the companywide remote work policy.

The accused member initiated the takedown of the personal servers but, due to the uncertainty of sporadic Covid waves, taking down the server in a quick and exhaustive manner was not a high priority. As a result, some automated scripts related to the build machine were left running on his personal server at this time. When the buildings next to his office were shut down due to confirmed covid cases he took a risk and fully set up his personal servers to aid in development. Since all company machines were monitored using a companywide endpoint solution, the existence and usage of his personal servers, ones that were subject of approvals and re-approvals, must be reasonably known to Nexon over this multi-month period of development. Not a single warning was received from that security team so it was easy to construe it as acknowledgement that his actions were acceptable, otherwise it would mean that Nexon would be failing at taking reasonable measures to maintain the confidentiality of their assets.

Shortly after Nexon's leadership became aware of the accused member's plans to leave the company, instead of trying to resolve it a professional manner, they abruptly sent the Internal Audit team and accused him of stealing files, despite having observed his personal server being used without notice for several month. Due to harassment and the lack of respect from the company and after consulting with his lawyers, he concluded that his private information on his private servers was not subject to any record so he deleted his information to ensure his privacy.

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

And I would've tried on the steam Deck.