Dark and Darker’s developer, Ironmace, says returning to Steam’s storefront is entirely up to Valve, Steam’s parent company. However, Steam may choose to proceed gingerly given Dark and Darker’s prior legal woes.
While many Dark and Darker fans are chomping at the bit for Dark and Darker return to Steam, the situation remains a bit precarious.
The RPG game is now open to early access. The full release should be launching at some point later in the year. However, finding Dark and Darker on Steam poses challenges.
Steam removed Dark and Darker earlier this year after Nexon issued Ironmace a cease and desist regarding copyright infringement.
Ironmace developer ‘sdf’ hopes that Dark and Darker does indeed make a return to Steam.
“That’s our hope, but it’s for Steam to decide,” sdf writes. “But we understand and respect their decisions as we understand their concerns about the things that surround us.”
In fairness, the Nexon lawsuit was tossed out in court.
“The game is still in a state where only the core part of the first-person extraction dungeon crawler is implemented. This game needs more systems and more content to keep the season healthy and worth replaying.
“However, what I am interested in at this point is to defend vulnerabilities as much as possible and build a system to defend the core as effectively as possible. It is not possible to prevent them 100%, but we are continuing to think about minimizing them in various ways. For that purpose, we will gradually introduce all existing methods.”
Dark and Darker is a popular first person hybrid game that pits a dungoen crawler against a battle royale game. The game is set in a medieval fantasy world. The role playing aspects are derived from aspects of Dungeons and Dragons. The game features a slew of characters, including a fighter, barbarian, rogue, ranger, wizard, cleric, bard and warlock. If you survive a match, you extract loot for future engagements.
On February 16, 2023, South Korean video game company Nexon alleged that Dark and Darker had copied one of their games, at least in part. And thus, the dramas began. Some of that seems to be behind Dark and Darker, at least for now.