Nexon- the indie squasher

 Dark wings, dark fires.

If you've any sort of history with the decades of social multiplayer games that have existed since time immemorial, then there will be no doubt that you've heard of the Korean development conglomerate known as NEXON; or rather, that you've heard of NEXON's flagship game which once existed on everyone's PC: Maplestory. There was a game that took the very simple premise of socialisation in a 2D environment and turned it into one of the most successful titles of it's kind in a time when no one quite knew what a game like that might even look like; the prehistoric age of 2003. Do you know how far back in the history of gaming that is? That predates Gears of War, Bioshock and freakin' World of Warcraft! Nexon was doing massively multiplayer before the game that practically birthed the modern face of that genre! Which, as you can imagine, makes them something of the giant fire breathing lizard of the Korean gaming scene. And as any fire breathing lizard would, NEXON have thrown about their weight of late.

But before I go further into that, let me introduce IRONMACE. Now IRONMACE are a much more recent, and much more indie, studio that came up from a small 'merry' band of developers looking to cut their teeth on a fresh and exciting project. Luckily for them, IRONMACE landed on a hell of a title to show off with the near over=week success of their in-progress alpha title: Dark and Darker. (Now I know you've heard of that!) An extraction-type game that takes the decently fresh subgenre of Battle Royale and extends it to the natural range of- the other typical style of fiction. If the original game was a Sci Fi- you just need to make yours a fantasy. And Tarkov is... well not exactly Sci-fi but the philosophy still works just fine.

Dark and Darker is one of those tiny games that really could, cobbled together with Epic Store assets and dreams but packing a solid construction that found it's audience increadibly quickly. Players are thrown in a dungeon as a typical fantasy archetype character from which point they pick up loot, cobble some sort of build from that loot and fight their way through traditional fantasy trash-fodder and even other players in order to extract with that loot. Right now it's very front facing and straight-forward, nailing that basic premise with as much singular mechanical dedication and precision as possible before going the distance of custom making an entire game's worth of assets and throwing in story and lore and all that extra nonsense. What we have right now is basic, functioning and most importantly fun. Which is the issue.

A fun game is a popular one, afterall, and popularity breeds jealously. Popularity is like a drug, and when it's drip-feed buzz begins to fade from the system, symptoms of withdrawal start to pollute at the mind. NEXON lived their entire lives under the light of clout, and seeing the industry blossom out but not funnel directly into making Maplestory as big of a gaming icon today as it was two decades past- well, that's going to smart at the winged monster, isn't it? At least, that's what I can presume is the reason why NEXON have spent much of the last year, and probably a lot of time before that, relentlessly pursuing and throwing hell towards Dark and Darker and IRONMACE, high on trumped up claims of plagiarism based on one common employee the companies shared who left the Korean conglomerate with a distaste in his mouth. On the past few months alone, NEXON are setting themselves up as scourges of the industry.

Accusations are one thing, of course. One very petty way to get back at someone who left under a haze or doubt, but NEXON weren't happy with just accusations. Seeing as how the employee in question was a remote worker and thus received data on his personal server, (which according to him was perfectly allowed and monitored) NEXON saw that as suitable grounds to have the police raid the Dark and Darker offices searching for stolen data. Of course, the police aren't miracle workers so they failed to conjure the missing data out of thin air like NEXON wanted, but that was by no means the limit of their dastardly plans. They also went all out and got Dark and Darker pulled from Steam by way of legal notice, which is veering on illegal if their sporadic hunch of theft is as wrong as it very much seems to be.

For their part, IRONMACE have retaliated to the accusation in perhaps the most full way that a small indie development studio possibly can; with a list. IRONMACE posted up a list of every single asset that NEXON accused them of stealing and provided a definitive source for each and every one, neatly showing that a lot of their assets belonged to the Unreal Engine store, not the mysterious 'Codename: P3' game that NEXON has been working on behind the scenes and is now accusing IRONMACE of stealing and rebranding as 'Dark and Darker'. Not only that, but for assets that shared names with Nexon's assets, IRONMACE explained how each name is a generic fantasy trope following a standard asset naming convention that several fantasy titles using the Unreal Engine probably use. (They even matched a few with another fantasy game who have the exact same asset names) In broadstrokes, IRONMACE went out and came back with a laundry list of checked and double-checked receipts.

But NEXON can't back down from this, they've slipped far past the point of no return in their dedication of reputation and monetary investment. It rarely gets so black and white as a giant conglomerate trying to brutally stamp out the little man because they missed out on an opportunity they seized on. IRONMACE even teased going so far as to explain how their smaller team managed to get out a product in a reasonable amount of time whereas NEXON have been lumbering along with their p3 game at the speed of molasses. It really does seem like these indie devs are running circles around NEXON and making the company look like bad-spirited fools. At least that's a slam dunk in the court of public opinion.

Yet that's where the good news ends because, guess what: none of that matters. Who's right doesn't matter in a world where the richer guy runs the courts. NEXON were able to send off the Korean police like lapdogs to breakdown the doors of IRONMACE's studio, what else do you think they're capable of doing? Certainly wrapping up IRONMACE in fruitless litigation until the studio runs out of money and ends up going bankrupt. Because that's simply the way of the world, if a megarich scumbag wants to go ahead and to ruin your life to make themselves feel better, well you can count on them having the means and knowhow to pull it neatly off. That's what you get for believing in the fallacy of a grass-routes success story in a system rigged from the top.