A playable online demo of Dark and Darker is a hit at the Steam Next Fest. We loved it, and it quickly became one of the most played games on Steam while its demo was live.

Allegation that Dark and Darker uses assets and/or code taken from project P3 first appears on Korean gaming site, This Is Game.

Police raid Ironmace based on Nexon allegations of stolen code.

Dark and Darker is delisted from Steam entirely following DMCA request by Nexon to Valve.

Nexon alleges that concept art, code, and in-engine assets from P3 were all used in Dark and Darker, additionally that P3 and Dark and Darker project leader Ju-Hyun Choi illegally transferred a significant amount of development materials to a private server before being terminated from Nexon. Nexon also alleges that Park and Choi encouraged P3 team members to Dark And Darker Gold leave Nexon for Ironmace.
Ironmace's overview response is six pages long and also includes a link to Nexon's takedown request to Valve. Ironmace frames the private server accusation against P3 and Dark and Darker project lead Ju-Hyun Choi as a belated retaliation for his choosing to leave Nexon in the middle of 2021, claiming that his usage of a private server to store game assets was an outgrowth of work from home adaptations during Covid lockdowns.

As Ironmace puts it, Choi's usage of the server was discouraged by Nexon, but never directly shut down, and receded to buy Darker Gold a secondary concern as the team returned to office. It was when Choi announced an intention to leave Nexon, Ironmace claims, that legal proceedings against him began and he was terminated by the company. Further, Ironmace alleges that Nexon only copyrighted its P3 development materials in February of this year, seemingly in response to Dark and Darker's success in the Steam Next Fest.