I did a uni paper where we had 6 weeks to: learn a new software (unity), learn a new coding language (c#), and then design, build, and release a game. Nexon is so detached from reality.
Fun fact: Nexon once sued a programmer named "DrUnKeN ChEeTaH" so all the court filings had to include that name written that way a bunch of times. I just think that's really funny
Filing these bogus infringement claims should come with serious consequences! So sick of the whole lawsuit culture and bullies pulling legal threats out of their asses.
Barring whole individuals and corporations from the legal system for a fair trial based on subjective reasoning for filling Lawsuits... what could go wrong ? And do we remove licenses as well from Lawyers that participated in these Lawsuits ? Come on.
Yeah I mean it is easy to make a copy paste crappy game like they made, y'all should really research this crap yourself instead of just taking what this goofy fool says 100%.
its funny if you every played lost ark those guys are on crack. They pumped out so much content at one point that they had to slow it down due to players just not finish or clearing at the rate they where putting out dungeons,missions,lvling,ect
Exactly. As an employee at a company, you pick up certain best practices and naming conventions that you make use of on your personal projects. Nexon using file names as evidence of foul play from FORMER EMPLOYEES is just moronic.
@@jonhawk117 Among us in 2020. It was a generic murder mystery game and it was really fun to play with friends. Past 2020 they tried hard to be unique
Corp Inc is more recent. A new game that came out of nowhere, you and your team are just space scrap sweeper and oh boy the game delivers. Helldivers 2 came out of nowhere and was good, but then Sony got greedy. (Thank you Steam for the refund, fuck CorpoRATS).
It’s actually crazy how video game companies pursue things like this-as a business, you can’t be angry that someone left your burger company and made better burgers down the street. “Oh no, he’s using beef. WE use beef.” Unless this guy has an explicit non-compete he violated there’s zero chance this holds up, regardless of the other history between him and Nexon. Insane
It’s a massive waste of time if none of the code is the same. I’d guess it’s just them swinging the hammer and trying to beat out competition financially through legal fees. Comparing beef to code is a little tough though haha. Also, I sign non competes for a sales job- might be a bad comparison as well, but I’d imagine gaming companies do the same
It's more like a company A was perfecting the burger recipe by certain ratios, materials from a specific vendor, how they're going to market it, how the store layout is gonna look as well as colour scheme. The manager that was overseeing all this with funds from investors, decided to start storing all of this information in their personal storage(to expedite the launch since he has to work from home because of Covid). Gets warned for it by investors, quits, brings a bunch of other core members with him to start a new burger joint then uses all the information except they're all bought from different vendors and ratios are off by like 0.1 so it's not an identical copy. Edit: Personally as a consumer though, I give 0 shit about it as long as I get the better-tasting burger.
@@CloudsTravels There we go. That's a good beef comparison. I'm right there with you- have not paid attention very closely at all to what's going on, I just want to play Dark and Darker so whatever is needed for them to finish the game I am in favor of.
"You can't copyright, 'own' a genre, _It's not yours._ " I love Charlie's comment, "It's not yours". More publishing companies need to be punished more severely for lying so blatantly and wasting everyone's time.
@@dsd2dsd2 Hey, just updating you on the situation, Nexon Korea filed lawsuit in Washington, USA for copyright infringement on April 14, no less, the first day of the playtest, directly blocking it from being on Steam. This is not about righteousness or protecting companies from people leaving, it's about sifling competition with money.
Nexon really just tried to take someone down with the excuse of, "We buy our products at the same store and write the same genre of fanfic, so clearly they're stealing our stuff".
@@nicholasalexander9866 oh we will, literally has no case and we plan on destroying him 😂 but the time it takes away from my other responsibilities hurts the company in its own way
Take any single frame out of dark and darker without any context and anyone would think it's a unity asset flip that was made in a weekend. The difference is dark and darker is an actually good game despite this.
From what I can tell what happened is the indie developer heard an idea that the corporation had and manifested it first rather than the usual which is vice versa, this is like some guy making shoes in his basement outselling nike or something surely very embarassing for nexon
my favourite line from it was definitely "Since key members of Ironmace were also on the development team of the P3 Project and know how quickly and haphazardly the P3 Project was built, if anything, using assets, design, and code built for that project would have been a hinderance rather than a benefit to the development of Dark and Darker."
Imagine you're an employee just working for a salary on P3 team and did not want to lose a big corp job to follow your project leader that got fired start a new company. Then after they get a cease and desist, your old project leader calls out that all the coding that was made UNDER HIM and with the team members that got poached were garbage and unusable. FeelsBadMan for the members of P3 that stayed behind.
Oh I totally called it, I commented yesterday they definitely think the bought assets belonged to them. Likely because their own devs lied about producing them.
This would be like buying a table from ikea, seeing the same table at your friend's house, and then calling the police on them for theft because clearly nobody shops at ikea except you.
"My table was built in-house, and took me weeks to put together. It is impossible for my neighbor to have built the same table in an afternoon as he claims, so the only reasonable conclusion is that he stole it from me."
No, this is more like you once worked for Ikea, and your buddies, you all got fired one day and told not to make things that look like Ikea. Then a few months later you came out with a whole new furniture store based on Ikea designs and got called out, now you're rallying people around you to fight the big bad company meanwhile there's still proof you are using stolen assets and no one cares. Dark and Darker deserves to fail and all involved deserve to fail, as does Nexon.
@@lordrevan571 There was literal proof they created their own assets and use unreal assets. None were made by, Nexon. Nexon needs to be publicly shamed and ruined for their previous blunders and especially this one.
You missed the best part where Ironmace said that because they have employees who worked on p3 and know how haphazardly it was thrown together it would have been a hindrance to use that source code. Such a fantastic burn especially when paired with the mismanaged company part. Love it, long live dark and darker!
The fact that Ironmace used ChatGPT to prove their point is not only an extremely galaxy-brained move, it’s such a clever insult that I’m honestly impressed
@@snepping1885 they literally ripped off mario kart / other kart games for their game "kart rider" or some shit and now they try to claim the fantasy genre
Not really dude. Saying "I thought it was okay" is not a valid legal argument. They might be winning in the public's eye just because people are so dead set on supporting the small guys but they aren't winning in court and unless the guy who stole copyrighted material from his old company comes up with a better excuse than "I thought what I was doing was okay" then he's screwed and the game is dead.
@@bestieswithtesties but he didn't do that. If he did, Nexus would've proved that source code is copied. They didn't do that. And because court relies on evidence, if they won't do it, they won't win the case.
@@bestieswithtesties You didn't listen or read very well if this what you thought happened. He saved files locally from when he was working at Nexon, not files relating to Dark and Darker or P3 but generic files that were then destroyed. All the files they claim he "stole" are shown to be generic assets from the Unreal store, the files that weren't from the Unreal store are shown to have similar names because they are generic fantasy names. If they really wanted to prove that the files he "stole" are in fact Nexon's property why did they not try to prove they were stole by file hashes and not the file names? Their claims are bogus.
Nexon made a mess of their effort and they got beat to the punch, so now they have to bully a smaller company who can do better than them. How embarrassing.
Idk if you saw it but they dismissed the case because they ruled ironmaiden did not infringe or use trade secrets so could be good news for dark and darker
Nah it'll be doa & forgotten since the ceo was arrested for being a drug lord kingpin in meth, and the game was eventually made with drug money and not a overall product in the end sadly, so its pretty much canceled entirely
This lawsuit is essentially Nexon claiming that they own their employees and anything they do or say whether as a current employee or not is copyrighted by them.
not nintendo per say but animation studio that publishes pokemon or has some connection to it completely willing to dmca over a screenshot or well drawn drawings
Pixar did it to DMA Design aka Rockstar with Uni Racers and won. They claimed the unicycle from an 198 something short was used and of course the court ruled in Pixar's favor which caused all of the game for the SNES/Super Famicom (I don't know if it was released in Japan) had to be pulled from the shelves. It was mentioned in an episode of Fact Hunt. Heck, Kernkraft 400/4000? stole the song that would become Zombie Nation from a game dev and was rewarded the rights by the court. That was mentioned in a video from Uncanny X.
@@Instabruh.User.. Someone that's actually better than Charlie wouldn't have to advertise themselves stating as such, they would succeed regardless just based on the quality of their content. I know this is a bot but god damn this shit is annoying.
If Nexon can't prove anything, they should have to pay a reasonable fine to IronMace due to time lost. Whatever an industry standard income would be for their size of audience for the time they were down. It's unreasonable that a company can just make a claim to shut down a company without any compensation. At the very least, Nexon should also have to shut down completely while the case is under investigation.
@@Adieritno, it was out as a free demo on steam, and only accessible during their playtests. That said, it's likely going to be a drawn out legal battle for them still, rooting for Ironmace!!
@@mbornhorst7 You could buy it. You can no longer buy it. Despite the fact that this event will almost assuredly increase the overall sales of DaD, they could easily say they lost sales during this period.
That whole point about it being impossible to develop a game that quickly is laughable 😂 "If I'm not able to do it you can't either because I'm the best like mommy tells me!" They're like a child covering their ears and screaming lalala so they can't hear you
@@superoakwood5513 That's a bad example imo. That game used the Fallout 3 engine which was built from the ground up by Bethesda i think, which means, yea Fallout 3 was bound take long to develop. Regardless of who made what and how fast.
@@RED_XLR fallout 3 and New Vegas where made right after the other,by 2 different dev companies (NV by Obsidian who where the OG fallout creators but they wheren't involved with F3) with obsidian on a giant time crunch and understaffed,the only thing they share is assets (similarly to how Dark and darker share most of the same assets from Unreal Library) Dark and darker was developed in 11 months using unreal 4+ most of the assets where made by the devs they just bought them Neither had to make the engine and both flipped assets,so?
Watching the two videos on this, it excites me to see that Ironmace is not only taking this so professionally and well thought out in defense of their game, but they're putting on a show while doing it. To respond to a full claim from Nexon about how they've made such a complete, fun to play game in 10 months with just "Skill Issue," I'm definitely rooting for Ironmace to win this, and supporting a countersue for damages and conspiracy (for that false police raid). Looking forward to see how this ends!
watch kira videos on this instead IM is very VERY in the wrong here and i wouldnt call sob stories about "we had to sleep in sleeping bags during winter" etc professional the fact that now-IM employee kept code of p3 on private server after being asked not to also debunks the whole "skill issue" argument
Its great to finally see a studio clap back at Nexon for once, for those who don't know Nexon has a long history of doing this type of stuff as well as completely abandoning support for games they release if they don't immediately do well in the first couple days after release.
I don't even understand why Nexon is still around. They are so shit they should've died a long time ago. Not to mention they're getting a lot of shills lately due to a certain sexy gacha game.
Another thing about the file names is that the prefixes are usually there to denote what type of asset it is (ie. M_ for material, BP_ for blueprint, etc.) because when you see the file outside of the engine (ie. in subversioning software or just in a file browser), they all share an identical extension (.uasset) so this prefixing is common for practically all unreal games and projects in order to distinguish what the assets are.
Even the weirder ones like GA and GE are because they're using Gameplay Ability System, which was pretty much UE4.2+ standard before Lyra came out with UE5. But yeah, you're 100% right. I'm pretty sure I have a BP_arrow in my fantasy game right now.
My personal highlight was BP_PlayerController, which presumably is just the blueprint implementation of PlayerController.h, which comes with the engine
I love that the Dark and Darker devs didn't only slam dunk Nexon but shoved ChatGPT down their throat in a serious but funny way considering how widely popular AI ChatGPT is right now.
Reading the part about 9 of the accused member left with them and "...-shows the trust that the accused member instills in his peers." is actually heartwarming. It's not much of a consolation but if I were the accused guy reading that I would never leave. That sentence shows the humanity games are supposed to have is still there, even if just a little. The person just had their former place of work act like a crazy ex with the audits and lawsuits. Edit: DAMN THEY SLAPPED THE HELL OUT OF NEXON. Straight up told them "Just because it may be difficult for you doesn't mean it is for us." I haven't heard much about Dark and Darker until this, and this company's response is such good PR that I'm interested in the game now.
i think my favorite part of the response is the fact that he used to work there. he KNOWS how bad it is there. why the hell would he copy anything that was made by nexon. i say boycott nexon until this is resolved in favor of ironmace. dark and darker was my most anticipated release for this year and to see it get swiped like this is infuriating
Good luck boycotting nexon lmao cause it wouldn't do much since it's only 5% from Europe and NA China and Korea is where they earn the most of money from lmao
I think we all know who's nexon next target is... hide before they find you bro! they will try to succ every penny no matter where and how small the amount is
This is probably one of the best responses I have ever seen. They were so concise in disproving Nexon's baseless claims and had no filler while keeping the insults to a minimum. I don't think they could have done it better. Nexon probably thought they would crumble under pressure but actually they did quite the opposite 😂 larger company's like Nexon get so jealous when another company gets amazing levels of success while only having 1/10th of their work force
To be honest as a gamedev i see what Nexon mean. Its not code stealing but idea stealing. The true reason why new games cant be developed fast and officient is iteration of mechanics. Usualy you reprogram one mechanic several times untill you hit something that plays good. If this developer "stole" those good solutions it can feel bad. In development you spend at least 40% of time on developing prototypes that are often changed.
@@PanSkrzynka_ You are basically saying "having experience" = stealing idea. it's not stealing if you learned to code better and designed better mechanics based on past experiences. Why do you think an experienced developer has at least 3x the pay of inexperienced ones? Also, Nexon are suing them for stolen codes and assets, just look at their DMCA Notice documents, stop muddying the water and misrepresent the facts.
@@ted6755 You missunderstand it. Think about it this way. How many "mafia" type games ware thare before Among Us? Its not about expiriance its about specyfic design solution. In reality no one know wich small changes will create better player expirience untill thay are tested in specyfic game enviro. Making games isnt as simple as "imagine a game and make it real" or "this mechanic will 100% work". Sometimes mechanic will work in one game and be pointless in another.
@@PanSkrzynka_ I'm arguing against ur arguments of "stealing good solutions/idea" . That is not stealing, it is simply utilizing previous experience, and what u said is right, u indeed can't simply copy and paste a mechanic, which further proves Ironmace didn't steal shit.
Nexon basically saying: "Hey! Everyone! These guys are trying to make a good game and I don't like that!" Whilst every thirsty gamer is like: "A good game in these trying times?"
Man, the guys in Asmondgold chat kept saying "If they had proof, they were innocent, they would have put it out there by now! Clearly, they're guilty of this!"... This is what the sound of "Egg on your face" sounds like. I love how we've become a reactionary society and agree with the first opinion and then buy a ticket to the hate train.
@@Smileyreal The funny thing is that asmongold's take is a lot more mature and objective than Charlie here that just repeats whatever the fanboys say. The truth is that Nexon has a real case and imo both parties are scumbags.
That’s the same kind of argument used again Kwite in his whole situation, and well… that ended up being false too. I hate it when people take this whole “GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT AND IF THEY DONT RESPOND INSTANTLY THEYRE OBVIOUSLY GUILTY!!!” Stance online. It’s the most brain dead way to deal with situations like this.
This happened recently with Wizards of the Coast. The takeaway from that whole situation was that there are rules in place which say that no one can claim ownership to the *rules* of a game.
That's why WotC has the rules for D&D officially described as "guidelines". They tried to use the fact that D&D is a guideline and not rules they can copyright it.
I am a game sound designer, all those files named “AK” are just parameters from the audio engine called Wwise. Also they use very common names such as “volume parameter”, etc. It’s a normal naming convention. All games would be “stealing their assets” if they count game parameter names as “owned material”. It would be like Adam Sandler DMCA every jpeg ever made because it says “1920x1080 pixels”.
@@jamesflames6987 don’t they say in this document that these “assets” are the same as in P3? I thought that’s why they were listing them in the document.
@@jy3406 They don't claim the assets are stolen - that doesn't make sense because they don't own them. They are claiming that the game referencing an identical set of assets indicates it is based on a stolen build. If you read the DMCA claim they actually make a pretty strong case that the game is just a modified version of their game. For example all the characters are the same with the same character design, just slightly altered portraits. It's not like they found some random game on the internet and declared it was "too similar". They already showed the guy was taking files off their servers, then he comes out with a game with identical mechanics and identical assets and we are supposed to think that this is a "coincidence" - out of all the millions of possible assets he chose exactly the same ones as them and put them together in the same way.
@@jamesflames6987 I see, thanks for the clarification. The “AK” files I mentioned are still very basically and commonly named though. Any project using Unreal/Wwise would have those. Same goes for the Unreal Store assets. I don’t think these files in particular constitute any grounds for a copyright claim, since it would be like copyright claiming a movie that uses a third party soundtrack licensed to two separate movies for example. Of course if they actually did duplicate custom made assets from Nexon’s server that’s theft.
@@jy3406 To take the movie example, suppose there are two movies that use exactly the same sound effects, exactly the same costumes, and exactly the same props. Even if all those things are publicly available, it's pretty obvious one movie is based off the other.
1 year later and they are still in the middle of the legal battle. it's fucking crazy how shithead companies like Nexon can drag this crap out so much just to impede Ironmace's developement of the game. hope this shit gets resolved soon and we get Dark & Darker back onto steam.
The funny thing is that the first thing you would think when you look DaD is that it could have been made in 1997, it's really a throwback game. The reason why its so popular is because it's made extremely well and with obvious passion.
It reminded me of the early dungeon crawlers inspired by DnD. It's not even an original idea. Nexon is so full of shit they think they have a ton of originality with their P3 shit.
this is exactly how i feel, Dark and darker captures the old school feeling of gaming, you know....to have fun? and Ironmace seems passionate for making that a reality again
as an active MapleStory player that, along with the entire game's playerbase, sighs and slowly loses hope that this company will ever stop being so out of touch with their own biggest cash cow on every single disappointing game update they drop, seeing this news puts a smile on my face
Used to play Maple story well over a decade ago. It was a okayish/good game. Came back to it a few times through out the years, and each time it just feels worse. I liked the original classes to choose from (warrior, mage, thief, bowman)….. It feels like it lost its soul.
Its a shame cuz as an active reboot player i love maple just hate nexon and their decisions for maple. They got the ground work but greed and pettiness and lack of care for their customers/players lead then down a path of pure dog dookie.
It’s hilarious how they completely overlooked the potential backlash of taking a wildly popular game off the marketplace. Ubisoft or EA wouldn’t even do something this dumb.
I visited Florida a few weeks back, and I ran into Charlie at a Walmart. I asked for his autograph, and he promptly put me in a headlock and threw me to the ground, where he delivered kick after kick directly to my face. This continued for a total of 2 minutez and 36 seconds, after which he stopped, where I was rushed to the hospital. I just got out and have fully recovered from the physical and mental trauma. Keep up the great work Charlie.
this is the equivalent of when the magician in frosty the snowman throws his hat in the garbage and then wants it back when it brings the snowman to life
It's a game that truly depends on its playerbase. You don't want to be left with the top 1%, the average opponent needs to be a new player. Though the chances of us seeing Dark & Darker anytime soon are slim now. Nexon has fuck you money and that's all that really matters in the "court of law". Iron Gate's best option is a crowdfunding campaign...
@@AuthorityCat oh true, sweats can ruin it but the devs are very active in the community and seem like genuinely good people. It would surprise me if they implement a ranking system or something similar to help newbies. 😊
@@AuthorityCat Im worried about this too, but cant ironmace threaten nexon with like loss of profits or something similar due to the amount of time and effort this has likely taken? I feel like that could potentially be enough to shut nexon up because at this point they dont really have much to stand on legally and pretty much only have the money
There needs to be consequences to making fake claims when you then later withdraw them and/or legal challenges. That why companies will think twice about testing the water and trying stuff like this if they think there’s a chance it’ll backfire and will have to backtrack.
My childhood was a Nexon game called Mabinogi. It's not hugely popular here in the US, but it had, and still has for the most part, a good sized fanbase that has stuck with the game for years. I played that game from the time I was 7 until I was 18 and still occasionally jump on it to catch up with old friends and whatnot. Aside from the gacha aspect of it, which is very common in Asian games, it was truly the greatest gaming experience of my life. It sucks to see Nexon falling off so hard, but I can't exactly say it's surprising.
combat arms was my nexon downfall, they like all their games. run them into the ground with, devs who can do great work but are forced to make them P2W garbage
Nexon is just the publisher of these games. We can still love the developers (Wizet & DevCAT Studio) & slam Nexon. Nexon also introduced the gaming world to Gachapons & rental costumes.
Holy moly, with that last sentence i could hear the knock out sounds from old arcade fighting games as nexon's death scream was played with highly amount of delay and echo while the devs from DaD sput out a winning quote with the judge narrating the words: *You Win, Perfect*
as a game dev this was so predictable but the fact they had that spread sheet ready to go that fast is beautiful. Every dev knows about these type of assets its amazing to me that they think this would work legal standing.
Sure, game devs know these assets. But not the judge presiding over the case, nor the common juror should it come to that. It wouldn't take much to confuse a lay-person with some deviously worded language. This case has a long way to go before they're out of the woods, no matter how slam dunk of a case.
Sadly, not surprised that a major game company would lie about their ownership rights to screw someone else over. *Especially* an ex employee. “We bought the rights to use this in our game, that means if you don’t work for us (anymore) you can’t use them!” Might as well tell me the people running the company are children, I’ll probably believe it at this point. Even less surprised that they tried the exact same thing with their ex-concept artist. “You can put pen to paper? Cool, everything you create beyond this point belongs to us now. Oh, you want to quit and go work for someone else? Haha. That’s cute.”
3:10 fun fact, all these names [assets] seen here are from the Wwise integration plugin for Unreal Engine. Wwise is basically an audio engine that almost all UE games use nowadays meaning these listed "assets" are not the original companies either as they actually belong to Audio Kinetic. The fact they included this in their legal document either means the people comparing data are not devs nor consulted with any (so they should have no business deciding what is stolen or not if they don't understand how asset files work) or they intentionally included assets they don't own but are similar to pull one over on people hoping they wouldn't notice and make DnD look more guilty somehow. They are also clearly trying to use the term files here so they can effectively triple the perceived severity to people who don't understand (which is probably every single person in the courtroom) that a game asset is made out of 2-3 game files.
Whoever did that spreadsheet better get a nice bonus this year. Looking forward to seeing this game come to full release, and I hope this only gives them more publicity.
if i had one atom for every time a video game company was devious i would have the entire observable universe and any of its variants in the multiverse
