THANK YOU everyone for your interest in this topic! This coverage was especially difficult because of the nuance of Korean law and the charged public opinion. I tried my best to create a video presenting both sides based on dozens of hours of piecing together everything. Ultimately this will be an issue that the court decides and I think it will follow my likely outcomes list posted at the end of this video. As a massive Dark and Darker fan, I pray we'll see the game in some form and that the issues get resolved. Gaming needs developers with mindsets like Ironmace. I also hope everyone can see the forest through the trees and understand some of the interesting ethics arguments at play here for the wider gaming industry. Like many of you, I'm anxiously awaiting positive news in the Ironmace Discord.
Here is another fact you might have missed. Because of this entire thing Nexon's share prices are taking a huge hit for the past few days. Shareholders might have them quash the whole thing because they don't like the public perception to be influencing there stock prices. Remember perception influences money faster than courts.
@@WhyRUclipsSucks Because shareholders have an enormous and often a detrimental influence over corporate decisions. Many court cases have closed due to the effects on share prices.
It's interesting how people get caught up in the 'narrative' of Ironmace being a 'dream' or.. something like 'passion'. We need to peel back those dreamy words for a moment. The reality is that the project leader ignored warnings, moved confidential material to an external server, attempted to leak internal personnel by saying there was an outside investor (an anonymous revelation in February, corroborated just a few days ago), and was disciplined for it: fired. (It's a small piece of information that only two people in Nexon's 20+ year history have ever been punished with fired, including the P3 leader.) It doesn't matter what "meaning" Ironmace attaches to this fact; if it matters, why were they negotiating with the very class of companies they declared to despise so much until earlier this year? Finally, what's interesting is the nuance of Ironmace's English/Korean announcement. Hopefully, those of you reading the comments in English will recognize why Ironmance looks different to Koreans than it does to English speakers (and let it be known how ridiculous it is that Koreans who live and develop games in Korea for most of their lives would release an English announcement first, and then a Korean announcement of the same thing two days later). (English) '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.' (Korean) 그리고 사무실 주변 건물들이 코로나 확진자로 인해 폐쇄되어 더 이상 출근할 수 없게 되는 등, 업무효율 저하의 불안감과 일정 준수 및 목표 달성의 부담감에 A는 개인 서버를 재승인 없이 다시 사용하는 실수를 했습니다 (Translation: And when the buildings next to his office were shut down due to confirmed covid cases and he could no longer go to work, under the pressure of meeting schedules and goals, A made the mistake of using his personal servers again without re-authorization.) To you, they may look like heroes for their determination and actions, but in Korea, they are asking for forgiveness, saying that they made a mistake under pressure and had no choice but to do so. I want you to think about why they are intentionally creating this nuanced difference. It's not the narrative that matters right now, it's what the narrative is trying to cover up.
I really like the combination of various data including Nexon and IRONMACE data! I didn't like that most RUclipsrs, especially RUclipsrs who unconditionally defend IRONMACE, *NEVER* bring Nexon and media materials, but only IRONMACE's materials.
Youre saying bs bro. Most of the youtubers Ive watched are bringing attention to both sides. A lot of people find Nexon sketchy because its nexon and something about the entire situation looks sketchy, but most people are holding off on blaming anyone until more proof is given. For my part, I hope IRONMACE wins, just out of the fact that they were able to actually finish a playable demo of a game that has taken Nexon more than 3 years to develop and even went ahead to cancel it in the end. Just on that ground alone, I hope Iron wins. I dont even care about the legality of the situation; if Nexon was unable to bring this game forward despite their obvious capital advantage, how in the heck can another studio be blames for them getting ahead?!
@@blkwngP3가 IM때문에 파기 당했으니 넥슨의 상처받은 인디겜 개발자들을 위해서라도 넥슨은 끝까지 소송할 것이고, 이기기위해 노력할 것 입니다. 저는 'P3의 전 디렉터인, IM의 대표'가 단순한 돈 욕심때문에 개발자들의 미래를 망쳐놓은 것에 분노합니다. 또한 도둑질한 것에 대해 처벌받기를 희망하고 있습니다. 그는 IM 으로 속아 넘어간 넥슨직원이였던 인디게임 개발자와 P3 를 개발하고있던 넥슨의 인디게임 개발자에게 상처를 주었습니다. IM의 입장문이 나온 것만봐도 지금 처벌을 안받을 생각을 하긴커녕 인정해버리고 받아도 떳떳하다며, '자신의 범죄에는 뜻이 있다' 자신의 회사에 입사한 개발자들이 다른회사로 도망못가게 회사이미지를 범죄의 이미지로 낙인시켜 '너는 우리와 한배를 탔다'라며 반쯤 IM직원을 향해 '나가지말라' 협박하는데 저는 IM이 좋게 보이지가 않습니다. 당신이 생각하는 옳고그름이 고작 회사 2개가 싸우고 있다, 그뿐입니까? 게임을 사랑하고 게임이 개발되는 환경을, 그리고 게임을 개발자를 존중해주십시오.
@@blkwng There's nothing sketchy about the situation though? It's just a classic case where one side has an English speaking presence and the other doesn't exacerbated by it cancelling a game people were excited about. Nexon is pretty obviously in the right and the game is stolen. The only question is how severe the punishment will be. One key fact that most western sources completely gloss over is that P3 wasn't cancelled. It was cancelled after he stole the files, left the company, and took a lot of the developers.
@@Mezmorizorz that is a lie. He was fired, after which came the lawsuit, then the project canceled, and then the actual owner of ironmace left the company and brought with him the rest of the team. Thats first. Second, nexon has English speaking presence. In case you didn't know, they have an entire division for America. So your argument is nonsense. The very case file shows all the points you've just given to be wrong. So ehat, did you just come up with this without even researching it?
Thanks for insights. I believe that there has been some moral hazard on IM’s side. There seems to be beyond reasonable doubt that IM’s director went rogue and privatized company property.
Not just that, if all of this is true, he engineered a situation that allowed him to leech an entire team of talent from a company through maliscious means.
@@Bound4Earth I think that’s a bit much. They’re not his drones, they’re adults and can make their own decisions. If they wanted to walk, it’s because they believed in the project and didn’t want to work for Nexon anymore. Maybe they knew he had the company resources and chose to walk because of that, that information will probably never be public. But I think that claim is still a little far fetched.
nah if you've read through the cease and desist letter, the original head got fucked over, left, offered a better opportunity for the original devs and now nexon has claimed they're stealing their assets, assets that came from an asset store mind you. of the 2000 or so more infringements they claimed it was quickly dropped to less than 40 files so yeah nexon is most definitely in the wrong and just trying to sabotage their old workers
Been saying this since the start. Its crazy how pretty much every large streamer/youtuber who talked about this clearly has never had a real job if they have no idea regarding non-compete laws. They are super common.
I had to sign a 5 year non compete just to teach swim lessons lol Here is the catch though. If these employees were under NDA or non compete breach why is that not at the forefront? Everything from Nexon is about the IP itself.
@@SurR3AL392 There is a court cause in South Korea for Non compete in this matter i believe. Im not sure why the whole copyright stuff is getting so much attention.
A lot of comments here saying it's OK because P3 is a canceled project. What they don't know is that P3 was canceled BECAUSE the project was unable to keep going, after the fired lead developer poached several core members from the team to leave Nexon and join IM.
"Poached", or you know, simply asked them to leave a shitty company and they all agreed. Nexon clearly wasn't the best place to work and I don't blame anyone for wanting to leave there given the terrible games they are milking right now.
Maybe read the entire story for yourself. The game was cancelled prior to lead dev being removed. And people willingly made the decision to go with him not forced or bribed. So yeah i think a game like p3 that was cancelled roughly under 3 years ago is laughable to claim and will give big companies ploys to repeat this case for any game similar to their game. The precedent here is very dangerous if set
@@MrRunes233 You really don't need to bribe, let alone *force,* to convince someone to leave their job for yours. Specially if they're disgruntled, which I assume a lot of people in a mega-corpo like Nexon will be. At the end of the day, just engaging in the discussion is a first step in "poaching." Some people will require actual bribes, some form of gain in the deal, some people were just waiting for an opportunity to present itself. Some people will even leave a place *at a loss* because of how miserable they are.
@@DiegoGarcia-qf1wv Yes of course, "simply asking", with false information like "Nexon wants to scrap P3" (which they clearly didn't want, as P3 was first announced to public (August 5, 2021) even after the lead developer was fired (July 2021), right before half of the team left the company and P3 pivoted to P7 (mid August, 2021)) and "We've already got a huge investor outside." (which turned out to be not true, or at least not any more, apparently)
By far, you are the only English speaking youtuber who dug this issue deep enough to breakdown the actual facts. I hope more people could watch this video. It's a shame some youtuber that has more than 10m subscribers is misleading his followers with his biased and inaccurate opinion.
If IM wins It means any employee of indie gaming who sees great potential in their project, can ditch their company and develope rest in other companies with better payment, the end of indie game.
As a Korean gamer let me just add some extra context for why most of the Korean gamers are on Nexon's side in this despite their hatred towards them. 1. Devin kinda mentioned it but the original P3 project leader who would later make Ironmace was fired by disciplinary dismissal. This is super rare thing to happen in a big company such as Nexon that has unions. Usually the if it was unjustly done the individual would go to court over it and have a good chance to win but the project leader did not do so in this case making it seem that his release was justified. This incident caused P3 to be canceled and later be changed to project P7. 2. Nexon recently has been trying to clean up their tarnished reputation in the gaming industry and has made a sub brand called 'Mintrocket'. They were going to release P3 as their first game until it was shut down due to the incident above, and instead 'Dave the Diver' was released. It's a good game with no MTX and has that indie game charm, which surprised many Korean gamers and gave hope for some fresh waves in the Korean gaming industry. How ever if Nexon loses this in court, the Korean gamers are afraid that Nexon and many other MTX pumping companies will not invest in making games like Dave the Diver and return to their usual money grubbing ways. 3. This is mostly speculation but many Korean gamers suspect that there might be a big company behind Ironmace. One of Ironmace's official statements sent out to the press had @hybecorp.com as one of the recipients which is used by a huge entertainment company HYBE. Now HYBE started as an entertainment company but branched out to gaming last year and made HYBE IM with many former Nexon employees. The circumstances surrounding this points to HYBE committing corporate espionage to push into the gaming industry and Ironmace was one of their tactics. Many big news outlets caught on to this and started reporting on it and shortly after HYBE denied all that and said that they recently pulled out of negotiations.
So, for no real reason other than feelings. Nothing you stated has any real bearing...the dev's firing(unless you have insider information about the exact details of that firing), being sympathetic to Nexon because....they released one game with no mtx, and conspiracies about corporate backing, despite the fact that Nexon is literally owned by multiple foreign entities including the Saudis. Huhhh?
ALSO, this already happens so often in the asian game industry, especially with mobile games, so many games are clones of AFK Arena, such as Mobile Legends. Also why does IronMace have no chance of winning? does your judiciary change it's rules to public pressure?
@@ExarchGaming Yeah those points make no sense lmao. Especially the backings of IronMace that couldn't find any sponsors and cash and almost went bankrupt, having their office in an old gym... They're definitely not rolling in money. By default I will never take the side of the big corporation, especially one as scummy and lame as Nexon. They do not have a track record that warrant any sympathy.
@@shuikai272 and maybe don't use any resources given by the company = use your own stuff for everything including the internet connection and electricity.
@@shuikai272 Yes, you're not wrong. If this was their idea, and they pitched that idea to a company and that company bought into that idea and supplied it resources, yeah the idea quickly becomes the company's IP. Chances are there's a bunch of legal stuff in their contract specifically about that. The problem here is what Devin outlined. Should someone be able to gain a bunch of knowledge at a company, then leave the company and design essentially the same game from the ground up before what they used to be working on was even released. That's very murky legal water to explore. Even if you absolutely hate Nexxon (which I do), it's hard to believe they have absolutely 0 case here. And what's weird about it is that Dark and Darker is very tied up now in a legal battle. Even if they came out on top, I would bet you that there's going to be several publishers scrambling to make dark and darker 'clones' right now. You can't own a genre, and Nexxon can't sue a studio that has absolutely nothing to do with them for making something in the same genre.
I know people who are fans of the game have been doing mental gymnastics trying to explain why it's not the same game. How ever when the lead developer and 11 others who worked on this game for over a year, leave and restart the project under a new name, the game is technically stolen. Doesn't matter if they bought or used the same free assets, remade it from the ground up, or if Nexon canceled it. It's the same game being developed. They are liable under any contracts they signed while employees of Nexon. There really is no dancing around this, it was the same game being made, they admitted as much. I'm always in favor of indie devs passion projects over bigger studios but I don't trust either party to give us a straight answer.
Absolutely not, that is a really bad take on this! This is like trying to gatekeep former pizza restaurant workers from opening their own pizza restaurant. "No you are only allowed to open a burger restaurant". A game developer is allowed to make what ever game he wants to do. Stop trying to gatekeep people.
@@Mobay18 First off, deep breaths, no one is trying to gate keep anyone, we all love you. The lead developer and 11 other prominent members of that team continued development of a game from a former employer. They admitted as much. If they hadn't been part of Nexon and it's development of the game then they would be fine. That is the unbiased truth of the situation. Just like when Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea from a project he was working on called harvard connection, he ghosted the owners of that project to go create a less exclusive version for an international audience called Facebook. Different code, different name, expanded idea, he still got sued had to pay a lot of people. Good day sir.
Hey Devin, Unreal developer here. It's very common in industry practice to use prefixes (and occasionally suffixes) for file names i.e (blueprint)BP_DoorUnlock (Static Mesh) SM_WoodenDoor etc would be a very common across studios, and given the likely hood that a "wooden door" is likely going to be called a "wooden door" by pretty much anyone, the chance that the file names could be similar is very very likely, the actual elements behind the file name (blueprint script/model) would be what you'd have to look at to determine if the files were indeed stolen.
And IronMace has said in actuality there's only 41 files with similar naming conventions after removing the Unreal store bought, and those are explained through Recommended file naming conventions lol.
@@Bozemoto Yeah except Door_Wood makes no sense because that's not how English functions. If you wanna know more about why variables and files are named in such way, you should read Uncle Bob's CLEAN coding book. He goes in detail why we name our variables in a certain way. To your point, BP_Wood_Door would make little sense when in English, adjectives ALWAYS go before nouns. You want to make your code look as much as possible to English sentences.
@@tatsunithelennyking2540 That's just not true. If you have many doors of a variety of materials, you might start with the word Door so that when alphabetized in the project folder all doors are together (or so you can easily search for all doors by entering "BP_Door_"). For example, BP_Door_Wood would be preferred in a situation where you also had BP_Door_Metal, BP_Door_Stone, and BP_Door_Wood_Double. Assets are not named the same way that code variables are because you use them differently. Variables have to be read in-line while trying to understand code. Assets are almost never used that way. Instead, assets have to be searched and organized, which means naming needs to favor accurate categorization and standard conventions over readability.
In terms of file names being the same or similar, I don't believe that means much of anything. If they did diff comparisons of the files and they were extremely similar (90 to 100%) that would be far more convincing. In programming there are certain conventions for file naming and file placement within the directory structure. For instance if you have a code file that interacts with the file system (create, read, update, delete) you will likely name it FileHandler and place it in the handlers folder. The games are made using the same engine, they share a common setting, and are of the same genre. So it's possible that the filename matching is just a coincidence. Nexon did not have access to the uncompressed code files at the time of issuing the DMCA request. Likely that was obtained in the police raid.
If your employees are at will then they should be allowed to walk and create a competing product. The company doesn't own them. If they don't steal assets that's their knowledge and it is up to the company to incentivize employees to stay. Otherwise you end up with McDonald's suing former employees when they switch to working for Wendy's because they learned "trade secrets" at McDonald's
The company doesn't own its employees, but it owns the ideas created using its resources. The ideas created with Nexon's investments are vital to the survival of the company, and this applies to similar companies. Ideas are a one-time thing and are essential to the success of a product. For instance, imagine a small company announcing a new product, but their idea is stolen by a large company and released before the smaller company even has a chance to launch their product. This is a significant problem because that product is a primary reason for the survival and success of that small company. If it gets stolen, the company may fail. Similarly, the ideas for games are incredibly important to companies like Nexon. When an employee leaves and copies all the ideas for a game being created by Nexon, which they were specifically hired to generate, it becomes a significant issue for Nexon. Essentially, the employee makes Nexon's investment a net negative. Nexon paid its employees to collaborate and generate ideas under its administration, but if one leaves and creates the same idea under a competing company, Nexon just paid for the success of that company because of one individual who didn't like Nexon. Regarding incentivizing employees to stay, in a broad scope, a company can't make every employee satisfied. No company in the world can do this. So eventually, even under the best gaming companies, one person may just leave and copy an idea for any game that they were merely a part of developing. In response to the McDonald's example, if some employees working at McDonald's create the "secret formula" for their newest menu item, and one of them leaves, stealing all the ideas created by the group of people being hired by McDonald's for their latest product, and gives it to Wendy's, it would be a massive deal and an easy lawsuit tldr; ideas for games cant exist without the company and shouldnt be given to competing companies because of one individual
That’s just not how the business world works though, anything created during your tenure belong to the company, not you. Sometimes you can have wording changed to allow employees to take on pet projects on their own, but I doubt that’s the case with a billion-dollar company. Hope it works out, but I wouldn’t bet on it. They’ll just get tied up with lawsuits they can’t afford until the fight isn’t worth continuing smh
moistcritikals take on this is actually imo a dangerous one. take the extreme inverse of this. a small start up company has a great idea but due to their small size it will take forever to be made. they hire new people and they explain the whole thing in great detail so that everyone on board can get to work. however, there is a blizzard/ea "spy" that got hired in and then this is such a great idea that after hearing of this they leave and tell blizzard about this idea. blizzard and their big team then make it way faster and they capitalize on the idea instead of the small company. this is basically the same as what they did assuming what was said in this video is correct with it being a big company was stolen from by a smaller one. also, i cant remember if it was said in the video but its a BIG difference if p3 was canceled and IM left to bring it back to life or if they left and nexon reassigned the team members to other projects thus p3 died because they left. in the 2nd case, if i was the court i would 100% give the case to nexon. IM was paid to produce an idea and took the idea and ran.
Just think that this idea is original without checking anything, watch this video - "Secrets stolen" (the mod Nexon doesn't want you to see), wow, original nexon idea!
The real question will be if any of them signed (and got paid for) a non-compete clause prohibiting them from making similar games in this case. Interesting case and could potentially impact a lot of software developers in South-Korea
Non-competes/NDAs are common in jurisdictions that don't have strict trade secret protection laws (and are hard to enforce as they conflict with protected rights, their value in reality is proportional to the imbalance between parties' ability to finance legal costs to prosecute/defend). South Korea does have strong trade secret protection laws, so private non-compete agreements are neither necessary nor even desirable as they would relax the standard.
It's blatant ip theft, and yes industrial espionage, moist critical take is dumb as hell. No games would ever get built other than by small one man bands because there is no protection or incentive to even start developing games as a dev studio.
The IM crisis is not just an accident that will end in a lawsuit Currently, many Korean indie games are supported by technology and capital from large companies, and everything is suspended It is near the end of the Korean indie game world And DND is not just created by people who left Nexon Level designers and other developers who are currently left at Nexon have their efforts stolen
Welcome to game design? This is already commonplace in the gaming industry. Callisto Protocol being made by the devs of Dead Space, is one major example and the easiest one to remember in recent memory. Ex Starcraft Devs have formed Frost Giant Studios and are releasing a game called Stormgate, which will take many elements from Starcraft. (This one should be huge to you guys, I know how popular SC was there) the list g oes on and on and on.
@@ExarchGaming Yeah, except in this case the project leader left with an ongoing project leading to the project being cancelled. If this is to be allowed then no indie games can be made. Big corporations would just buy a person to bring all the data off of small companies if it seems promising and flop the project, who will stop that from happening?
@@집에가고싶다-l2u I mean.... the money part isn't something that happens often, but the actual game development thing does, which is extremely common. I don't know that it changes just because there is big money behind it, remember Nexon is owned by some huge investment groups, including the saudi public investment fund which has links to the saudi royal family.... im not sure how appropriate it is for someone like nexon to complain about "big money" when they're so heavily invested in by HUGE hedge funds. ya know?
I read his sources about the investors pulling out and that article does NOT say what he is saying. I mean he seems to have genuinely lied about the investors pulling out? I believed everything in the video but I was curious about that specifically and I can't find shit. The article he linked is Hive denying investment, that's it.. it's not "Everyone pulling out" after the police raid.
16:05 you are implying the investors knew something nefarious that we don't know. That is just pure speculation on your point. They likely just pulled out for the pure reason of the allegations existing. That is more than enough for most investors to get cold feet.
Is everyone really this naïve? Anyone in a decent sized company at a level high enough to be working with and/or creating intellectual property will sign contracts at the start of their employment forfeiting any ability to take any of that IP and use it outside of the company. You keep saying this will set a precedent but there is nothing to set, it already works this way. I don't understand how these guys thought they would get away with this.
everything they've said so far (things they described themselves as Robin Hood) are all lies, and they tried to make a lot of money with instant funding and run away, but they didn't expect Nexon to drop the game and that's the reason why they are cornered now. well It's just a joke, so you can ignore it.
@@Localpref416 ? Many people misunderstand that Iron Mace is acting as if they were sued only for copyright but Nexon sued Iron Mace for violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Act.
The only issue with that is that Devin Nash showed above that the lawsuit actually begun in 2021? Yet they continued producing the project all the way until what, 2 or 3 weeks ago? They had more than enough time to realize that Nexon was not diggin that.
Good review, although I don't think their case is entirely hopeless. The Korean law is vague and makes the burden of proof on companies to prove what a trade secret is very loose, but it's apparently so loose now since the 2019 revision that no one even knows how you're supposed to interpret the law. So this could be a long drawn out case that is going to basically set precedent for what the law is moving forward. That being said I do agree that from what we know, the case leans in Nexon's favor probably for the 'Trade Secret' part of the lawsuit and especially the personal lawsuit against "Mr. A" seems like he's probably boned. I think I agree with his version of events given, and that the investigation into the 'leak' was basically blown out of proportion as retaliation, but if he doesn't have a paper trail saying he got permission to keep the server up and Nexon has a paper trail saying they told him to take it down he's kind of fucked. Most he can hope to argue is just disprove any malicious intent like the allegation that he showed P3 material to investors. That being said I do wonder how the law in Korea works since apparently it sounded like they don't do any sort of NDA or Non-Compete clauses over there and rely on this vague law to enforce it. The fact they got a sworn testimony from "Mr. A" announcing his intention to leave the company and inviting employees to join him and say that argues IN THEIR FAVOR is pretty wild. In America if they signed an NDA and they had that on record, case would be open shut in favor of Nexon. Apparently it's not so simple over there, although in America if there was no agreement in their contract Nexon would be shit out of luck too.
Doesnt really matter. even nexon loses in court first place. they can take it all the way to Supreme Court and it will takes years and IM would runs out of money without any income from not being able to publish the game till sue is over
@@dsd2dsd2 Definitely the likely outcome. I think IM is probably going to be forced to settle soon. Nexon is putting on a hard ball façade but I'm pretty sure they'd rather just get Publishing Rights than go through this whole rigmarole. It'd be much cheaper to just lobby politicians and ask them to amend the law to be less vague for the future, and include Digital Asset specific clauses since there's none, so I don't see the point of bringing it up to the SC just to 'prove a point'. And they'll have to spend their own money to revive P3 on their own with a new team as well, why not just leverage IM's team anyway and keep the market share they've already gained?
@@amongstus4418 They are probably not going to revive P3. Doubt IM team would join back to Nexon too. Cause according to IM. Nexon already suggested that and They turned it down. so kinda too late for it.
I appreciate you keeping it real as always. I watched charlies video earlier and didnt realize he left out like 90% of the story. Keep up the good work!
This is the best explanation of this situation with the least amount of bias and the most amount of research that I've seen. Also, former South Korean President Park Geun-hye is a criminal who was exposed for her corruption (it involves a cult and she bribed ppl using government funds), impeached, and ultimately sentenced to 20 years in prison before being presidentially pardoned, so the first case example of corporate favoritism involving the SK Group is not a great example imo.
I think if the question is "Was the idea from the Devs itself on a vacuum, or they only came up with it because they worked on P3?" then the answer is of course yes, it only happened because they worked on P3... but the thing is: is that a crime? Devin said that it would make pretty difficult for companies like Blizzard/2K/Rockstar etc to make a game, and my opinion in this is: *yes, so what?* That would make so those companies actually pay and treat devs well, if they(the companies) don't wanna them to leave and do it by themselves then make it worth for them(the devs), wich is really easy for big companies since they do have way more resources than a small group of devs... it's capitalism... ~And just to end: I think in this case, on a ethical point of view, both Ironmace and Nexon acted on bad faith, Nexon cancelled the project even though it maybe had potential, and it's only going forth with this because Ironmance made somewhat a success with the game, I highly doubt they would care if the game was never good, at least this isn't how the things would went, and so did with Ironmace trying to take the game for themselves... What I'm trying to say is, it doesn't matter what side you choose, both of them are companies that aren't ethical, and that's the reality to the most of companies in the world, no one care about being ethical, they care about money. -And talking legally, well I can see both being right, with Ironmace saying it wasn't stolen, specially since it's a bunch of U4 assets, and you can't really say anything, or at least not much about the source code, and this being a very non-professional decision on Nexon's side, using brought assets from U4 store, even if it's placeholders, why is this unprofessional? Well look what's happening, this would never happen if it was all from scratch, specially a company with so many resources... but I would say it's way to naive say that it doesn't look way to similar to not be some level of copy, and again, maybe only being possible because they worked on P3. ~~Again very grey case, where there's lots of rights and wrongs, and you should wait to se what happen, and honestly for me as costumer *I DON'T GIVE A FUCK FOR ANY OF THE COMPANIES, I WANT A GOOD GAME,* it doesn't matter from who it comes from...
He didn't have to try very hard now, did he? Maybe pay employees properly and listen to the vision of developers instead of being a emotionless corporation focused on equity for bonuses to CEOs.
@@Foojeez Lol you saying Nexon didnt play employees? and listen t o the vision of devs? So where is the evidance that nexon didnt listen to devs or pay well to devs.
Saw the whole thing, I'd definitely fall into the Dark and Darker fanboy category (even working on making content for it). The info you had on how Korean Law interprets I've not heard yet so that helped paint a more whole picture for me and I appreciate it. That being said, I think your stances miss the mark a bit. I kept wanting to comment before watching the whole video to ask you if you had seen the Discord for Dark and Darker because it didn't seem like you saw the response of IM, the 1000 files Nexon claims to be stolen IM has listed where all of them come from leaving only 80 files (each one appearing twice so really only 40) just have standard naming practices. All in all, great video and maybe I'm drinking the juice too much but I think it's not as one sided as you made it seem in Nexons favor.
It's not really about filenames, even if Nexon messed up on that part. The main case is about employees leaving a company and making a product that's something too similar which they could not have come up with without working at Nexon and getting the internal information and experience. As Devin pointed out, SK law will more likely favor the original company in that case.
They took a protected idea and bought assets that looked exactly (or just way too similar) from a marketplace. You don't find this wrong? So if I steal Coca Cola's formula but use different brands of sugar, I'm not breaking copyright and other competition/industry protection laws? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
@@laranjo5999 If you steal Coca Cola's formula but use different sugar then you're not making Coca Cola and it would taste noticeably different and even still, that argument only works if Coca Cola also got their formula from a third party that is publicly accessible
@@laranjo5999 It is not a protected idea. They don't own generic fantasy aestethics or tropes, or battle royale, or dungeon crawlers. And the devs that left were part of the team that initially pitched the idea to nexon. Nexon never even registered their own game for copyright until over half a year after dark and darker was made public. Which shows just how little they cared about this project until almost half the team left, made their own vision of the game themselves, and started generating massive hype. For context; P3 was first shown all the way back in 2021, which would make the concept public knowledge even if they were the first to come up with it. It's like saying there can't be torchlight because diablo exists. If they have a problem with a similar game looking similar then they should make their own assets. You can't use store-bought assets and then complain that other people's games look too similar. Ironmace is a tiny indie studio with limited funds, and nexon is well nexon. Also their character concept artist is the same guy who was the character concept artist for P3. Honestly as long as no code was stolen nexon just needs to pull up it's big boy pants and learn to compete in a free market. You should see the actual DMCA, it's hilarious. I almost lost it when I got to exhibit E. x'D
it's obvious that justice is on side of Nexon and nothing would change if the court would be held in states, because at the end of the day South Korea are in american zone of influence and all those multi billion corporations more or less are involved with states anyways. The only way for D&D to survive would be to escape outside of american zone of influence, to the country strong enough to withstand US/korean pressure and not complying to american/korean law system, but then again there is a question - are ironmace ready for such a sacrifice?
If the case is as you describe, then there is no place for a DMCA. Nexon pushed for a DMCA. If copyright is not involved, there is no case for a DMCA. By the way, entire teams quitting is common, and even taking the clients is common. UNLESS their contracts prohibit that, which apparently Nexon forgot, even though it's standard practice in the IT sector.
We (ideally)do NOT permit theft in ANY industry, in ANY country in the world, why would it be ok in gaming, the most PROFITABLE industry? Ahhhhh. The old "bite the hand that feeds" conundrum. Question: Should creators be allowed to just run with the knowledge that someone else paid for, to make it possible for that product to even exist? Answer: I would say, absolutely, unequivocally, NO. It IS theft, it IS biting the hand that feeds, and on top of it? It's lazy, and scummy. They didn't need to make it a carbon copy of P3; they could've changed up the theme, made the venue OUTSIDE maybe? Change the combat, the era, the story, the graphics, and kept the extraction based gameplay that many other titles have been successful with. Instead they have a pattern, a Modus Operandi like any common criminal! Their MO: throw out their own carbon copy 6 months later after saying goodbye to the mother company, with nothing but the name change as usual, like ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THIEF DOES, and bobs your uncle: You have a gross violation of ethics that endangers the salaries and positions of hardworking, undeserving-of-malice type people with families to feed and such. If Nexon, (OR THE COURT, FOR THAT MATTER) were to permit that; it would become court precedent and the rule of the land and then why bother making a game? lol it'd just be stolen before release. It's full of fallacy to permit theft, it has connotations of "in for a penny in for a pound," it's an argument that can easily be defeated in court; AND SHOULD. If we permitted it, you know what game development would be like? A big round table surrounded by thieves, all greedily rubbing their hands together, waiting for one of the other thieves to throw anything of value on the table, so they can yoink it and scurry out of a castle full of guards that look the other way as dictated by law. Comically ona sidenote, doesn't that kind of summarize the plot to Dark and Darker ROFL That couldn't possibly become the reality in the real world >< Can't believe I'm saying this cuz FUCK NEXON but may God speed, the DEVIL Nexon, in their righteous lawsuit. Can't let the thieves steal from the temple right before the temple is released guys, if it doesn't make sense to you it's because you've never spent the time money and energy to create something and had it stolen and sold. PS DIRECTORS SHOULD NOT SCREW PRODUCERS! If that was ok we'd have no media at all. Dark and Darker? No. More like Dumb and Dumber.
However since Dark and Darker is such a great succes i am ofcourse biased, so I hope they settle their shit and give nexon the portion of the profit they deserve (they really don't but legally ofcourse) so we can just enjoy an actual good game that fuck knows how long hasn't been made.
I heavily encourage defining and drawing lines around what would be considered a trade secret. Everything revolves around this and I would be hard pressed to consider the fantasy theme + generic fantasy unreal market assets as a trade secret. That being said, is the know-how to stack the ingredients in sandwich to be considered a trade secret? (I do consider the feel, look, and idea of DaD/P3 to be as generic as a sandwich. Though I do like a good sandwich) "They would not have been able to make this game or have this idea without working at Nexon" is a powerful claim but not one that can be reasonably proved, which then makes me curious if the onus to somehow prove their point somehow land on Ironmace?
@@tomguglielmo9805 Not really. They would have to look into the actual code. From ironmace's response: *_"They were kind enough to list all the identical files names after removing the ones that are similar due to the usage of the same engine and appended it to Exhibit D of their takedown claim. Of the remaining 1032 resources listed in Exhibit D with identical names, 950 are due to being identical store-bought assets and plug-ins for the Unreal Engine. The remaining 82 identical resource files (actually 41 resources because the file names are duplicates with variations in the extension names) can be easily explained due to recommended file-naming conventions and general conceptual names that would be similar in a typical First-Person Fantasy game. We would welcome and be happy to do a comparative analysis of the actual content of these identically named files through a 3rd party auditor, if Nexon agrees to provide their files."_*
@@Martial_Autist look, Nex recently patented the codes FOR P3. if DnD has the SAME CODES, they stole from Nex. Your regurgitating a DEFENDING company in a suite. You would actually be a horrendous lawyer for a plaintiff...
@@tomguglielmo9805 Yes like I said they would have to look into the actual code. If nexon claims the code is stolen then they need to show that it is the same. So yes, the first part of your comment is just regurgitating what I just corrected you on. What matters is the content not the name. I mean they have 41 identical names atm, that really says nothing unless the code is a carbon copy of P3's identically named files. And then in the second part you say I would make a horrible lawyer for the plaintiff or something. Your point?
Can always trust Devin to make an S tier video on a subject. The fact they poached half the team in this situation really can't be understated. Not only are you taking the concept and development that somebody else paid for, you're then taking half their staff and thus the ability for them to produce that concept as well. The suits and boots in a studio are never going to see eye to eye on everything, but it's hardly a secret that the higher up rule with an iron fist, and if incidents like this became common place that'd only get worse - Where the last bit of creative sparks in modern releases are squeezed out to protect share holder investments in a project
Need to remember that they scrapped the project, so it's not like they poached them while they were working on said project and thus nexon was unable to finish - they decided themselves they don't want to continue with it so imo it became fair game. Law will most likely see it differently, with ironmace having to give % of the company to nexon.
As a dev, this is such a crazy situation. It certainly sounds bad for dark & darker. I think people just side with them because they hate nexon (which i can understand). I just can't imagine working on a project to turn apples blue at work, then quitting my job, convincing everyone else who worked on the same project to come with me and then making a company to turn apples blue . My (now former) company would almost certainly legally decapitate me even if no actual code was the same. This kind of seems like a textbook situation of why laws like these exist. Note: I do think companies in usa commonly abuse things like non competes and suing someone for a product they made while employed but not related to their work at all. I basically assumed the dark and darker situation was another one of these cases until i started to hear more.
While I think it's a grey area it's more like I got hired and I came up with an idea for project A, management green lights project A and puts me in charge and gives me the resources to finish project A. 1 year of work and management tells me Project A has been canceled and I will be assigned to other work. Disgruntled I quit and convince half of my old team to come with me because they are also disgruntled. I see how this is illegal or at least legally grey but morally it seems a bit unfair for this dude to come up with a golden game idea just for Nexon to say yes at first then change their mind before giving it a chance o can see why he would want to finish his passion project. Hopefully maybe Nexon can work out a deal rather then both sides saying legal fees.
its more like nexon wanted you to make blue apples but they want to make purple apples then leave and make the purple apples not blue ones, but yeah at the end of the day i just want to play the game
Imagine you have a dream of creating a video game, you go to a company called nexon and start developing the game but it isn't supported so you decide to talk to the company and leave to create a similar project cause the previous one was canceled and you create dark and darker, after sometime developing you start to have an absolute success with your game and your team, then the old company see your success on the project and it makes them feel inferior, so they decide to sue you and try to stop you from succeeding, what a disgusting company
So first thing firsf, Mr.A got fired before p3 project got canceled. (July 22 of 2021) for reasons such as stealing assets and poaching employees. Second, many employees were 'conviced' by Mr.A and left the company and went to Ironmace in mid august. Third, because many devs left, p3 project could not continue so it was canceled. Fourth, P3 project was supposed to be the first game from MintRocket so no, they weren't going to cancel it or whatsoever. So in conclusion, Mr.A wasn't fired after p3 project got canceled and Nexon did not wanted the project to be canceled.
Ironmace "mission" how they are against predatory mtx and casino shit that is immoral conflicts to what they tried to do is not the right way to fight against the things they stand up for. That kind of behavior is sus to say one thing and do the other. I can't ever trust someone that does that.
27 mins! & Dude, been watching you for YEARS and you have helped me grow my side hustle. Didn't know anything about streaming/social media after the military, you sir, are the one that taught me pretty much everything about the business aspect of this. Keep up the great work. I'd watch 2 hours of this just because I KNOW I will learn something.
I think the comparison of diaglo vs dark and darker has a very important detail that you did not express and that is that Diablo has actual assets they created not assets that are available to the public.
No, creating a massive program is *not* comparable with being a bus driver, pizza restaurant owner and gym owner. It's a massive oversimplification. If everything in the world can be compared with a pizza, then the word "trade secret" wouldn't even exist. Then again, even a secret pizza recipe can be a trade secret.
Funny thing is nexon said the “team” that was working on it up and left, therefore they could not finish the p3 project.” Who’s to say that D&D nerds didn’t pitch the idea of the game to nexon that were competent enough to make the game. Also the art and ideas are made from the workers. So if I write a letter for my employer, then write a letter for myself, the hand writing will look similar. So the art work will look similar as well in this situation. Furthermore people leave all kinds of businesses they learn how to do and learn trade secrets from. So in this case any contractor. Or store employee etc. can sue a former employee for starting his own business or company. Every new company could be sued then essentially. Was p3 a game that had the same ideas as dark and darker? We’re they teams of 3 going into a loot/extraction? Or was it just a dungeon crawler? Etc. guess we will see what happens. Great info tho. Will like and sub. Thx. 😎
One huge problem with the games being similar and the “trade secret” argument is P3 revealed (Aug 5th 2021) to the public before DnD was in development (Oct 2021). Korean law is Civil, meaning ‘as written’, so there is little room for interpretation where it states a ‘trade secret’ MUST be something “that is not known publicly”. But, what constitutes “information” is not defined, so that may spell bad news for Ironmace if Nexon can prove that DnD used some secrets from P3 to develop DnD that could NOT be considered public domain. Nexon is obviously reaching on some things (Copyright intent on idea of a “Wizard”?), which could actually bite them down the line. They may have a case against DnD somewhere under the mud of all this. Strong or weak? That’s up to the Korean Court system to figure out. Fantastic video Devin!
10:30 "What this means for the companies?" It means they should treat their employees, developers better, so they don't want to leave! I understand that the company spends money on research and development, and people shouldn't be able to take that for free. They shouldn't be able to use the material they created while working for the company, but they should be able to use what they have learnt while working. The company relied on this when they hired them, they hired a (lead) developer with existing experience. That experience came from somewhere: previous jobs, projects, education. They didn't raise a child to a developer. Yes there are trade secrets that are special cases, but companies tend to try to treat everything as secret even when it's public knowledge or was taught to the employees before they were hired...
great video really informative. There was so much support for Ironmace and while understandable, it's worrying that people don't think its an issue just because they are against a big corp. It's not even about the game but people are too parasocial with indie devs.
The main question isn't whether Ironmace stole assets, since they use mostly Unreal marketplace assets, it only serves as Nexon's primary entry into the lawsuit. The real main question, is whether Ironmace stole net code that was developed under Nexon. This net code could have been reused or used as a template/foundation for Ironmace's code. This is very hard to prove. Does Nexon have a case? Given the current marketplace of games, PUBG clones, LoL clones, souls clones, etc. This is a special case since the lead dev and other employees are former Nexon employees with prior access to P3 code. To me, on the topic of the video, of employees leaving to create their own company... what the industry can do is "non-compete" agreements. Former employees cannot work for competing companies or create competing companies for x amount of years. I would think this was standard in the gaming industry as it is common in finance/business.
Awesome explanation. Pure objectivity is rare recently. This should be watched by more people so they can make an informed opinion on the status of this issue.
10:36 We don't know how alike the two games actually are because the P3 project hasn't been released nor have they shown any proof of concept i.e. gameplay, trailers, advertisements, etc. So we're just stuck sitting here taking NEXON's word for it. They're a multi-billion dollar company, with a full year of development under their belt on P3 before DaD was even started, they should have been able to push the product further along and beaten DaD to market. Furthermore, when you look at games like pubg vs fortnite or paladins vs overwatch, there are extreme similarities, yet there's no lawsuit. Especially with Paladins vs Overwatch, there are nearly carbon copies of characters, yet no lawsuit. That's because inspiration of ideas is commonplace in the gaming industry, but you don't sue each other over it unless you're a super greedy billionaire. 16:00 The investors pulled out because of the publicly known allegations. The investors don't have hidden, undisclosed knowledge that hasn't been revealed to the public. The police raid proved to be fruitless and no evidence was brought to the table. In fact, it's more likely that NEXON knew this would scare off investors and get create headlines to damage the company's reputation and make game development more difficult as a result. This does not scare the dark and darker fans who have been watching this closely as this happened months ago and we've all known that it was fruitless. 18:00 Trade Secrets is being misappropriated by NEXON as a buzz word. At least in the US, specifically. Trade secrets in the legal system are defined as "(1) kept secret and (2) valuable because they are kept secret." This game does not utilize any secret designs techniques behind its mechanics. The game is very basic, simple, and straight forward and IM intentionally designs the game that way so that it couldn't violate any copyright laws and was so vague in scope and "story" that it couldn't be considered infringing on any other games or concepts. This is also the case when looking at Chivalry's "random dungeon" mod (see link below). You can clearly see that the idea behind the game type already exists. Tarkov is a very popular example of the genre as well. So clearly we can agree that there are no new game development or mechanics used by IM that NEXON invented. steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=545457243 18:21 Simply put, NEXON cannot legally patent those names in the US as they're too vague and very, very, very, very obviously used in hundreds of thousands of IPs ranging from world of warcraft to dungeons & dragons and even to the film industry like lord of the rings, the green knight, excalibur (or any movie about merlin), harry potter, etc. Those are bullshit patents that were applied for and displayed AFTER IM came to be as a tactic to bring the Korean public to their side. 22:00 The file names was already addressed. They're common file names that are commonly used across MULTIPLE games. "brick_flat_corner_floor" "brick_flat_corner_roof" like of-fucking-course there's going to be MAJOR asset name similarities across ALL games that use similar tile based world building techniques. This is not a valid point nor does it hold any weight and if you even looked at iron mace's dark and darker discord, they addressed that these tile naming techniques are taught publicly in game development conventions. Now consider this, what are the assets default names AND who named the assets if they're not default. If the lead dev named the tiles after acquiring them for P3, then left NEXON and P3, started his own company to make a competitor, and then also named his own assets that he purchased from the same store, how obvious is it that the names might be the same? AGAIN, not a good argument and it holds no weight. 24:15 You make the claim that the classes are too similar to other classes within different universes, but then IMMEDIATELY counter YOURSELF by saying that the side by side comparisons are damning... What am I listening to? Again, if you even took just a moment to look at the discord where they addressed this. IM used the same artist to draw the concepts for the character designs as was used in NEXON. And guess what? The LEAD DEVELOPER of NEXON's p3 game probably is the person who contracted that artist to draw up those designs. So guess what, you can bet your bottom dollar they're going to look similar. But ALL clerics and wizards and rangers and rogues look similar because it's a publicly well known and commonly used class design. C'mon man... This isn't even remotely close to damning. 24:44 the maps look similar. Guess what, they used the same unreal assets for the design of the dungeon. Do we know if P3 has a ruins map design that takes place outside? Do they have a cave system map that takes place in a cave filled with goblins? Or is it just the fact that the first map is a dungeon and that they used the same assets from unreal. That's not an argument for trade secrets. That's one of 4 maps that IM is using. So, again, not a good argument. You wanna talk about copying map or even game design, let's look at Diddy kong racing v Mario Kart, Axiom Verge v Super Metroid, Rockband v Guitar Hero, Bloodstained v Castlevania or even Castlevania v Super Metroid. I P.R.O.M.I.S.E. you NEXON did not invent the idea of a dimly torch light dungeon with brick walls. The idea of NEXON inventing that concept is probably the dumbest thing I've heard tonight. Also there are screenshots in that document that show NEXON using DaD screenshots as their own in place of an actual NEXON image. as seen below: ruclips.net/video/wHDboj5lw8A/видео.html 33:46 There are more potential outcomes. For example: 7. IM wins and their restraining order is accepted and NEXON has to let them be or 8. IM moves their company and staff to the US where korean law holds no precedence and their corporatist government influence cannot affect American businesses. Assuming the only court decisions that side with NEXON come from the Korean legal system as I just don't see any US judge siding with NEXON after what we saw via PUBG v Fortnite.
On March 8, 2023, the police raided Ironmace's office in Seongnam, in search of evidence over the allegations.[11] On March 24, 2023, Nexon issued a cease and desist notice to Ironmace to pause development of Dark and Darker in relation to the allegations.[1] On March 26, 2023, the game was delisted from the Steam online game store after Nexon filed a DMCA notice.[13] However, on April 14, 2023, Ironmace announced its fifth public playtest of the game, with the game and subsequent patches distributed through BitTorrent links instead of Steam.[12] On the same day, Nexon filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Ironmace in USA,[14] in response to which Ironmace claimed that the issue lies between Nexon and just one Ironmace employee and it should be settled in South Korea.[15]
halfway thru the vid. and i constantly hear everywhere that P3 has the same mechanics as DnD. i would like to see a demo version of the P3 Game to verify that they were first to have these mechanics. all i know is that they keep claiming our game was going to have this and that and etc. but no actual evidence that their P3 Game would have mechanis like DnD Edit: i wanted to Main Game that Game too :(((
The solution is actually much simpler. Just treat your employees well. Any other industry (even software development outside of games), companies understand this. If you treat your people poorly, and don''t give them a reason to stick around, they will leave, they will switch jobs, and may end up working at a competitor. At least in America, most employment is "at will" rather than contract. I don't know exactly how the gaming industry works but they are rather notorious for mistreating their developers compared to the rest of the software development industry. I also have to agree with the guy who gave the "take"' near the beginning of the video. Not much into legalism or moralism myself, what matters most is that employees are treated right and people are free to work on what they want to, and where they want to. Sure it the amount of money that big companies are willing to put into developing games, but even this (less money, but more passionate, and happier developers) may well be better for the industry in the long term.
Regarding the dark dungeon feature being contested: I hope Almost Human Games sues Nexon because they stole the aesthetics from their game, Legend of Grimrock... oh wait. Or is it that dungeon crawlers are traditionally in dark dungeons with torch mechanics? There is an entire genre built on these same tropes and visuals: the aforementioned Grimrock games (especially the first one), The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians, Dungeon of Dragon Knight, Heroes of the Monkey Tavern, Skullstone, etc. Just to pull some up. This is why IRONMACE claims Nexon is trying to claim genre tropes. I could also mention Exanima (that's isometric, though) as having similar visuals and mechanics, and also certain levels of Amnesia: Dark Descent. Because it turns out, light can be a major game mechanic, and torchlight usually matches well with stone walls instead of, I don't know, cinder blocks and plasterboard.
When I watched Charlie's video I had a very similar opinion to yours. We run into this problem more often then you'd think in the tech space. It's not as simple as people think. I was going to mention it on his video, but nobody would have seen it anyway. Thanks for saying what I was thinking.
im sorry devin, IMO if you create completely new code from top to bottom, completely free-use and self-developed assets, and you release your game before a completely separate company: take the bag. Ironmace had the bigger drive to make this game than nexon. sure, this game was inspired by P2, but i dont believe someone can own the idea of "medieval extraction game". that completely stifles growth for these genres.
@@GOLDENKAIOKEN then you would also know that Nexon sued Ironmace(Mr.A specifically) for violation of the Act on the Prevention of Unfair Competition and Protection of Trade Secrets, and allegations of violating the Act on Aggravated Punishment for Specific Economic Crimes and others right? Not just because they made game with same 'gerne'?
@@GOLDENKAIOKEN you made the mistake of replying to the nexon goblin that spams propaganda under every comment positive towards Ironmace. No hope in squabbling with a fool who mindlessly shills for a corporation that would rob him dry if it wasn't illegal.
8:59 Easy. They shouldn't. Because who then decides who can use these codes/assets/ideas? Let's say the original team has 30 people. 5 people leave and they make their own game based on the one they were working on for the company. And then another 5 leave and create their own game. And then another 5 leave and create their own game. So now we have 3 different teams with 3 different games. The games will be strinkingly similar. And now each of these teams can sue the other 2 teams of stealing their IP. So how would you deal with that? Whoever leaves the company first gets the exclusive rights? That would be funny. Whatever you do for the company belongs to the company, unless stated otherwise. It's the same with music industry - a musician working under a big label can't even perform his own songs in public without the label's permission, even though he was the one who composed it, wrote the lyrics, and performed it originally. (PS. Still here at 27 mins)
Ironmace was founded by Terence Park Seung-ha (also known as Terence[8][9] on the Dark and Darker Discord) in October 2021, who was also in the P3 project team.[10][11] Since the disbandment of the P3 development team, the core of the development work was reworked into another tentatively titled game, P7.[11] Ironmace denied the allegations, stating that the game genre could not be copyrighted and the game was created from ground up using Unreal Engine assets and handmade code.[12]
Have not finished the video yet but I think as of right now is cut and clear at the statement of them working for the company. Anything they worked or developed durringt their employement was not theres to take right? Fo example, if A machinist creates a custom piece at his job, for his job. He by law can't go and sell that pieces to someone else?
"If this precedent is allowed" that game devs can walk with their skills it changes the whole game industry in an exclusively positive way. Game developers own their skills and know-how, and the more devs are encouraged to leave large abusive businesses and do their own thing, as long as they do not steal copyrighted materials, the better. The precedent that game devs are not allowed to use their own skills and compete with a prior employer is anti-competitive and bad for all of us. This is not a matter of just "we like dark and darker" this is a matter of, if nexon is allowed to do this, it is objectively terrible for the entire industry and all game developers everywhere.
My first thoughts when hearing about this situation was "Nexon is just bitter, because their employees continued a project that they canned." After hearing your whole video though... I am now very worried for Ironmace.
as a game developer, my concerne would be a company saying " you made X game in this genera for us, therefor, you cant make any game like this on your own time or for a future company". I wonder how likely this is to become an issue or not?
Something to keep in mind that there *has* been a sort of precedent. Blue Hall (who now we know as KRAFTON) had its history with NC, the developers of Lineage games. They left while developing Lineage 3, made TERA, got sued, and NC did win but with no damage proven (i.e. could not prove that they suffered the damage they claimed by the incidence). A part of reason why there is a discrepancy between when Project P3 was halted/scrapped may have to do with this, as Nexon would like to argue that the project got halted because they lost a chunk of dev team, while IM would like to argue that the project was halted before the exodus happened (i.e. they are not responsible for the potential lost revenue). Also 27 min mark.
that case is different. In Terra's case, 'after the project drop' employees left, and in the case of Dark & Darker, 'project in progress' employees left. As evidence, after July 2021, when the director was fired for disciplinary action, Nexon introduced p3 as a game still in development in August 2021, However, later, the staff leaved sothe project was canceled.
@@chimc-dy6uh are you sure? Wasn’t one of NC’s claims that “because many people left, Lineage 3 project dropped and we lost money”? That argument wasn’t accepted in the court but that doesn’t mean that the sequence or the event was wrong.
@@AceaIvaliasorry ,When I used a translator, I couldn't confirm that the expression 'drop' was written but I still feel the same way. I'll explain in more detail. In the case of the Terra, you need to know the company environment in NC. NC is divided into a business team and a development team. The business team is always on top, and the development team is always on the bottom. The development team was uncomfortable with the business team constantly intervening in the work in such a situation, and requested creating their own studio as a group of development teams. However, NC rejected these requests and instead took their desks out of the office.(in word) In this situation, the project was virtually stopped, and the development team, who could not stand it, left the company and made a game. this is the outline of the Terra.
Plagiarism exists everywhere. Nothing is original these days. Even where there are patents, copycat products can exist legally. The main potential crime in my mind is only if Ironmace reused exact same lines of code or textures that came directly from P3 (within reason, since some code is always written in the same way). Unreal Engine 5 assets do not belong to Nexon. Game genres are not exclusive to any single company. Nexon dropped creating P3 before Ironmace became a thing. I hope Ironmace has been honest, which means Dark and Darker and Ironmace should prevail. I just don't understand how anyone can DMCA a game like this without a court ruling. This could mean that any fool can go out at DMCA random games!? WTF! We don't know everything, but I seriously hope some ANON hacker folks bend over Nexon if Nexon are bullying Ironmace unjustly.
The issue with holding very strictly to the letter of the law is that it doesn't allow for room to make rulings based on cases not accounted for by said laws.
- Investors pull out after police raid. No shit, anyone would, Nexon could of literally sent the police to do this to scare of investors. No offense but this guy does not know SK culture, Nexon's history, or the pull Nexon has.
You said it yourself. The case is about "There's no possible way Ironmace could have made dark and darker without stealing trade secrets". Well, good thing the project wasn't a secret I guess. How can the concept of a fantasy extraction dungeon crawler be "trade secrets" if they made it public, and multiple sources reported on it..
I don't think you understand announcing the game has nothing to do with trade secret right ? But actually taking and leaking the project file ? Like for example. If military announcing they are making new weapon now 1 soldier got caught having classified info about the weapon on his personal computer he will be charged.
@@dsd2dsd2 You would have to be able to prove that game code developed in house at Nexon for P3 was used to make Dark and Darker, otherwise they are just suing someone for copying a game they publicly announced.
I highly doubt IM will come out of this unscathed. This makes me sad, they were really putting a light at the end of dark gaming tunnel with their mission.
Personally I would want Dark & Darker to be fine and get released. For the good of the industry and further game development, if this is everything we know about the subject, I hope Nexon wins. Because holy shit, literally NOBODY will be able to get funding for another game without super stringent contracts, contracts that very skilled and experienced developers just WONT WANT to sign. So you end up with unexperienced, potentially less talented devs on any new game. I do NOT want to see this decline of game development. (More than it already is in some cases.)
I hate everything that you've said with a passion cause you have a really persuasive argument that shows the facts and makes a lot of sense, but I'm going to be huffing my copium for the next couple months/years. Mainly cause I haven't played a game that has made me feel this amount of enjoyment since I was a kid. **huff** They better extend the next playtest because of this.
It's hard to hear this as a Dark and darker fanatic, but the evidence you collected as well as your fact based analysis is too strong to fault 😢 #CASTBLESSIMCASTJUDGEMENTNEXON
I love Dark and Darker too but I'd let the lawsuit play out. I will say this, they didn't start a lawsuit for the hell of it. They probably have some grounds. In the end, hopefully both games come out.
I wonder, can they just fold their company right now, forget about Dark and Darker, piss off to America where the court system would be more favorable to them, and start a "new" project with new name? All that to avoid the highly likely unfavorable court ruling and setting a bad precedent.
I really appreciate you for presenting the facts despite your bias. On one end I love Dark and Darker, and I think Ironmace pulled a Robin Hood on Nexon. 100% this game is amazing and would have never been this good under Nexon (or ever even made). On the other end I def see why setting this presedent would open up a can of worms.
Look up Mintrocket and Dave the diver. It's sub-brand of Nexon, focusing on developments of more indie-style games with no toxic BM. P3 was being developed under Mintrocket, it was supposed to be released before Dave the diver before Ironmace bombed the P3 team and left. As much as I hate Nexon, calling Ironmace a Robin Hood?
Honestly,even the example with Blizzard he used... Sounded good to me. Predatory companies getting bit in the ass for their bullshit by the talented people they overwork and underpay? Hell yes. Oh,you don't want to invest your millions on game because the developers can no longer handle mistreatment? Don't worry, someone else will come along to do it for you.Crowdfunded games are a thing, they work. Early access, games when done right, are great. AAA games in recent years are mostly early access anyway, just without the tag :)
@@nightvolt9572 Where the heck did you get that info?Also if that were the case, why would they follow him into Ironmace? Xd Sounds like a bit of bs claim
I hear your argument about setting a precedent of people leaving a company to build thier own game after learning trade secrets ect; However I would say that this is a product of living in a free market society. For example lets say you are training to be a bus driver; they pay for your CDL and training but then you learn that the company is a greedy pile of garbage and want to leave to go work somewhere else or start your own transportation company. Should you be forced to either stay at a company you hate or work a different job in fear that you would use the training you gained to compete with them? No, I feel that the freedom to leave is important because it forces the company to innovate and look inward on how to do better. Companies would be more likely to treat staff better while practicing better ethics if they knew that thier workers had the freedom to go thier own way. If the only way you can prevent workers from leaving and creating a better game is by force, then maybe you should just do better as a company yourself. I understand this isnt a perfectly accurate comparison i'm just explaining my point of view.
I don’t know man I feel like if nexon wins this then it could establish a very scary precedent. Basically anyone leaving a company will be forced to work in an entirely different genre or there could be enough similarities to call it infringement of trade secrets. As a TTRPG player it would be like WoTC coming after Paizo for Pathfinder because some of their designers worked on 4e and the games both use d20s and skills to resolve challenges
If ironmace wins that means a lot of people will claim that company's work done by them is mine and leave, and as a result, many companies will be closed. Basically, Iron Mace ran away with Nexon's IP. Don't forget that part. Ironmace bought Nexon's wrath when they tried to make Nexon's work his own. Despite such a situation, Nexon even offered to collaborate with Ironmace, but Ironmace declined that offer. I think this is digging a grave with your own hands.
@@SUDDENROCK I disagree that they stole IP unless there is additional evidence that is not being made public that shows IM has exact concepts like boss mechanics or designs from P3’s development. What is currently being discussed publicly falls under genre and game mechanics which aren’t IP. However they could still be in violation of using trade secrets with the implementation of those mechanics and genre which is what is being discussed here
@@SUDDENROCKBut was P3 canceled or not? Because if it's been canceled by Nexon, it's like someone's enraged because after throwing his useless toy in the trash, claim it back when he see someone else pick it up, transform it into something spectacular, and turn it in gold.
@@Gio95066 P3 canceled because some of project members trying to steal project and take out many project members from nexon. You should know what comes first man...Maybe we can play P3 now if project going smooth without any legal problem.
He probably got paid for making the game, and then everything about the game should be the companys, fells like a greddy move from IM side even if noxon is a bad company
I'm just on the half, I will watch to the End, but I spent my 2 cents now, because I don't think you will change my mind anyways: "Should that be allowed that the Employees leave the company and make the same product better?" absolutly yes. Ofc I'm not allowed to use actual stuff i've written for the company i was working for, but I'm definitifly allowed to do that. So Diaglo 1 could be a thing, while it doesn't use ANYTHING of Diablo 4 itself. Path of Exile, exists.
it would be even worse if something like that happened to an indie studio, im also kind of suprised there is nothing in the contract to prevent something like that from happeneing
This is pretty simple. IF any assets developed for p3 were indeed copied and stolen and used in DnD then they fucked up. If not P3 team needs to prove that they have a unique cost to develop the idea that was infringed. If they can't satisfy either condition they should not be able to make further punitive claims.
Knowledge about the ingame development is not trade secret. The fact that Nexon was building a FPS medieval extraction game doesnt mean they have the right to stop the formal employees of making a FPS medieval extraction game. The game development its no just knowledge/ideas , if game is just ideas, everyone player is a gamedeveloper. everyone has ideas. The game is build upon thousand of thousand of lines of code , game assets , hundreds of hours to create algorithms . CODE - ASSETS - GAME ENGINE code was supposetly build from scratch. assets were bought from the store. game engine is open to the public. Equals ... the game was not stolen. If you think a game developer cant build a game from what he can remember/what he learned working on a company. What are you gonna do about ? lobotomize the developers after they leave the company? I think people are blowing this out of proportion.
It is the court's decision not you, to judge guilt or innocence. It is not up to us to know the details of the law. You can only know very fragmented information that is floating around on the Internet. We don't know exactly what happened.
I have a question! If the main game developer , who went to Ironmace after working on P3, was the one who pitched and made said idea of dungeon delving game ,and there is documented proof of this, would any of the trade secrets act part of "could not have made said idea without being involved with P3" still apply? That would have made a point morally, debatably, but what about legally? Thank you for your video,very informative.
If the main developer was an employee under Nexon then anything he produces is owned by Nexon. There is nothing debatable about that, be it morally or legally. If he is not happy about it he should never have accepted Nexon's salary in the first place.
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THANK YOU everyone for your interest in this topic! This coverage was especially difficult because of the nuance of Korean law and the charged public opinion. I tried my best to create a video presenting both sides based on dozens of hours of piecing together everything. Ultimately this will be an issue that the court decides and I think it will follow my likely outcomes list posted at the end of this video.
As a massive Dark and Darker fan, I pray we'll see the game in some form and that the issues get resolved. Gaming needs developers with mindsets like Ironmace. I also hope everyone can see the forest through the trees and understand some of the interesting ethics arguments at play here for the wider gaming industry.
Like many of you, I'm anxiously awaiting positive news in the Ironmace Discord.
Here is another fact you might have missed. Because of this entire thing Nexon's share prices are taking a huge hit for the past few days. Shareholders might have them quash the whole thing because they don't like the public perception to be influencing there stock prices. Remember perception influences money faster than courts.
@@deanmalibu3730 and it's related to this situation because..?
@@WhyRUclipsSucks Because shareholders have an enormous and often a detrimental influence over corporate decisions. Many court cases have closed due to the effects on share prices.
@@deanmalibu3730 Nexon share prices are up almost 5% this month... Idk who told you this
@@deanmalibu3730 Yeah... Sure sure... whatever right?
It's interesting how people get caught up in the 'narrative' of Ironmace being a 'dream' or.. something like 'passion'.
We need to peel back those dreamy words for a moment.
The reality is that the project leader ignored warnings, moved confidential material to an external server, attempted to leak internal personnel by saying there was an outside investor (an anonymous revelation in February, corroborated just a few days ago), and was disciplined for it: fired. (It's a small piece of information that only two people in Nexon's 20+ year history have ever been punished with fired, including the P3 leader.)
It doesn't matter what "meaning" Ironmace attaches to this fact; if it matters, why were they negotiating with the very class of companies they declared to despise so much until earlier this year?
Finally, what's interesting is the nuance of Ironmace's English/Korean announcement. Hopefully, those of you reading the comments in English will recognize why Ironmance looks different to Koreans than it does to English speakers (and let it be known how ridiculous it is that Koreans who live and develop games in Korea for most of their lives would release an English announcement first, and then a Korean announcement of the same thing two days later).
(English)
'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.'
(Korean)
그리고 사무실 주변 건물들이 코로나 확진자로 인해 폐쇄되어 더 이상 출근할 수 없게 되는 등, 업무효율 저하의 불안감과 일정 준수 및 목표 달성의 부담감에 A는 개인 서버를 재승인 없이 다시 사용하는 실수를 했습니다
(Translation: And when the buildings next to his office were shut down due to confirmed covid cases and he could no longer go to work, under the pressure of meeting schedules and goals, A made the mistake of using his personal servers again without re-authorization.)
To you, they may look like heroes for their determination and actions, but in Korea, they are asking for forgiveness, saying that they made a mistake under pressure and had no choice but to do so. I want you to think about why they are intentionally creating this nuanced difference.
It's not the narrative that matters right now, it's what the narrative is trying to cover up.
I really like the combination of various data including Nexon and IRONMACE data! I didn't like that most RUclipsrs, especially RUclipsrs who unconditionally defend IRONMACE, *NEVER* bring Nexon and media materials, but only IRONMACE's materials.
Onepeg bring both Nexon dumb asf and wrong anyways they literally bring using fantasy classes as an argument smh
Youre saying bs bro. Most of the youtubers Ive watched are bringing attention to both sides. A lot of people find Nexon sketchy because its nexon and something about the entire situation looks sketchy, but most people are holding off on blaming anyone until more proof is given. For my part, I hope IRONMACE wins, just out of the fact that they were able to actually finish a playable demo of a game that has taken Nexon more than 3 years to develop and even went ahead to cancel it in the end. Just on that ground alone, I hope Iron wins. I dont even care about the legality of the situation; if Nexon was unable to bring this game forward despite their obvious capital advantage, how in the heck can another studio be blames for them getting ahead?!
@@blkwngP3가 IM때문에 파기 당했으니 넥슨의 상처받은 인디겜 개발자들을 위해서라도 넥슨은 끝까지 소송할 것이고, 이기기위해 노력할 것 입니다.
저는 'P3의 전 디렉터인, IM의 대표'가 단순한 돈 욕심때문에 개발자들의 미래를 망쳐놓은 것에 분노합니다.
또한 도둑질한 것에 대해 처벌받기를 희망하고 있습니다.
그는 IM 으로 속아 넘어간 넥슨직원이였던 인디게임 개발자와 P3 를 개발하고있던 넥슨의 인디게임 개발자에게 상처를 주었습니다.
IM의 입장문이 나온 것만봐도 지금
처벌을 안받을 생각을 하긴커녕 인정해버리고 받아도 떳떳하다며, '자신의 범죄에는 뜻이 있다'
자신의 회사에 입사한 개발자들이 다른회사로 도망못가게 회사이미지를 범죄의 이미지로 낙인시켜
'너는 우리와 한배를 탔다'라며 반쯤 IM직원을 향해 '나가지말라' 협박하는데
저는 IM이 좋게 보이지가 않습니다.
당신이 생각하는 옳고그름이 고작
회사 2개가 싸우고 있다, 그뿐입니까?
게임을 사랑하고 게임이 개발되는 환경을, 그리고 게임을 개발자를 존중해주십시오.
@@blkwng There's nothing sketchy about the situation though? It's just a classic case where one side has an English speaking presence and the other doesn't exacerbated by it cancelling a game people were excited about. Nexon is pretty obviously in the right and the game is stolen. The only question is how severe the punishment will be. One key fact that most western sources completely gloss over is that P3 wasn't cancelled. It was cancelled after he stole the files, left the company, and took a lot of the developers.
@@Mezmorizorz that is a lie. He was fired, after which came the lawsuit, then the project canceled, and then the actual owner of ironmace left the company and brought with him the rest of the team. Thats first. Second, nexon has English speaking presence. In case you didn't know, they have an entire division for America. So your argument is nonsense.
The very case file shows all the points you've just given to be wrong. So ehat, did you just come up with this without even researching it?
Thanks for insights. I believe that there has been some moral hazard on IM’s side. There seems to be beyond reasonable doubt that IM’s director went rogue and privatized company property.
Not just that, if all of this is true, he engineered a situation that allowed him to leech an entire team of talent from a company through maliscious means.
@@Bound4Earth I think that’s a bit much. They’re not his drones, they’re adults and can make their own decisions. If they wanted to walk, it’s because they believed in the project and didn’t want to work for Nexon anymore. Maybe they knew he had the company resources and chose to walk because of that, that information will probably never be public. But I think that claim is still a little far fetched.
nah if you've read through the cease and desist letter, the original head got fucked over, left, offered a better opportunity for the original devs and now nexon has claimed they're stealing their assets, assets that came from an asset store mind you. of the 2000 or so more infringements they claimed it was quickly dropped to less than 40 files so yeah nexon is most definitely in the wrong and just trying to sabotage their old workers
Been saying this since the start.
Its crazy how pretty much every large streamer/youtuber who talked about this clearly has never had a real job if they have no idea regarding non-compete laws. They are super common.
I had to sign a 5 year non compete just to teach swim lessons lol
Here is the catch though. If these employees were under NDA or non compete breach why is that not at the forefront? Everything from Nexon is about the IP itself.
@@SurR3AL392 There is a court cause in South Korea for Non compete in this matter i believe.
Im not sure why the whole copyright stuff is getting so much attention.
@@draken5379 the dmca claim is why the steam page was taken down and iron mace was forced to address it in their discord. Basically just visibility
Ju-Hyon Choi was fired. not left or quit.
Thanks for the good research and clearing up! I was feeling frustrated because information that was well known in Korea was not explained abroad.
27 min, thanks for clearing up the misinformation and doing the leg work and presenting it to us, all for free.
Appreciate it
A lot of comments here saying it's OK because P3 is a canceled project. What they don't know is that P3 was canceled BECAUSE the project was unable to keep going, after the fired lead developer poached several core members from the team to leave Nexon and join IM.
Goood fuck em (nexon)
"Poached", or you know, simply asked them to leave a shitty company and they all agreed. Nexon clearly wasn't the best place to work and I don't blame anyone for wanting to leave there given the terrible games they are milking right now.
Maybe read the entire story for yourself. The game was cancelled prior to lead dev being removed. And people willingly made the decision to go with him not forced or bribed. So yeah i think a game like p3 that was cancelled roughly under 3 years ago is laughable to claim and will give big companies ploys to repeat this case for any game similar to their game. The precedent here is very dangerous if set
@@MrRunes233 You really don't need to bribe, let alone *force,* to convince someone to leave their job for yours. Specially if they're disgruntled, which I assume a lot of people in a mega-corpo like Nexon will be. At the end of the day, just engaging in the discussion is a first step in "poaching." Some people will require actual bribes, some form of gain in the deal, some people were just waiting for an opportunity to present itself. Some people will even leave a place *at a loss* because of how miserable they are.
@@DiegoGarcia-qf1wv Yes of course, "simply asking", with false information like "Nexon wants to scrap P3" (which they clearly didn't want, as P3 was first announced to public (August 5, 2021) even after the lead developer was fired (July 2021), right before half of the team left the company and P3 pivoted to P7 (mid August, 2021)) and "We've already got a huge investor outside." (which turned out to be not true, or at least not any more, apparently)
By far, you are the only English speaking youtuber who dug this issue deep enough to breakdown the actual facts. I hope more people could watch this video. It's a shame some youtuber that has more than 10m subscribers is misleading his followers with his biased and inaccurate opinion.
IM being David? But they were one of the Nexon!! They worked for Nexon. They are not just indie out of nowhere.
If IM wins
It means any employee of indie gaming who sees great potential in their project, can ditch their company and develope rest in other companies with better payment, the end of indie game.
As a Korean gamer let me just add some extra context for why most of the Korean gamers are on Nexon's side in this despite their hatred towards them.
1. Devin kinda mentioned it but the original P3 project leader who would later make Ironmace was fired by disciplinary dismissal. This is super rare thing to happen in a big company such as Nexon that has unions. Usually the if it was unjustly done the individual would go to court over it and have a good chance to win but the project leader did not do so in this case making it seem that his release was justified. This incident caused P3 to be canceled and later be changed to project P7.
2. Nexon recently has been trying to clean up their tarnished reputation in the gaming industry and has made a sub brand called 'Mintrocket'. They were going to release P3 as their first game until it was shut down due to the incident above, and instead 'Dave the Diver' was released. It's a good game with no MTX and has that indie game charm, which surprised many Korean gamers and gave hope for some fresh waves in the Korean gaming industry. How ever if Nexon loses this in court, the Korean gamers are afraid that Nexon and many other MTX pumping companies will not invest in making games like Dave the Diver and return to their usual money grubbing ways.
3. This is mostly speculation but many Korean gamers suspect that there might be a big company behind Ironmace. One of Ironmace's official statements sent out to the press had @hybecorp.com as one of the recipients which is used by a huge entertainment company HYBE. Now HYBE started as an entertainment company but branched out to gaming last year and made HYBE IM with many former Nexon employees. The circumstances surrounding this points to HYBE committing corporate espionage to push into the gaming industry and Ironmace was one of their tactics. Many big news outlets caught on to this and started reporting on it and shortly after HYBE denied all that and said that they recently pulled out of negotiations.
As someone who’s not Korean, don’t care
@@HAHAd2 Well if you don't wanna bother reading into the facts then I'm just gonna let you know now that Ironmace has absolutely no chance of winning.
So, for no real reason other than feelings. Nothing you stated has any real bearing...the dev's firing(unless you have insider information about the exact details of that firing), being sympathetic to Nexon because....they released one game with no mtx, and conspiracies about corporate backing, despite the fact that Nexon is literally owned by multiple foreign entities including the Saudis.
Huhhh?
ALSO, this already happens so often in the asian game industry, especially with mobile games, so many games are clones of AFK Arena, such as Mobile Legends. Also why does IronMace have no chance of winning? does your judiciary change it's rules to public pressure?
@@ExarchGaming Yeah those points make no sense lmao.
Especially the backings of IronMace that couldn't find any sponsors and cash and almost went bankrupt, having their office in an old gym... They're definitely not rolling in money.
By default I will never take the side of the big corporation, especially one as scummy and lame as Nexon. They do not have a track record that warrant any sympathy.
Wasn't expecting a breakdown on the Dark and Darker debacle but boy am I glad there is one. Something to enjoy while at work!
As a gamedev myself, this is a super interesting topic, thanks for the coverage
If you think of a really good idea, keep it to yourself apparently.
@@shuikai272 and maybe don't use any resources given by the company = use your own stuff for everything including the internet connection and electricity.
@@WhyRUclipsSucks just keep shilling, maybe nexon will give you free v bucks for their next microtransaction ridden cancer that they release next
@@shuikai272 Yes, you're not wrong. If this was their idea, and they pitched that idea to a company and that company bought into that idea and supplied it resources, yeah the idea quickly becomes the company's IP. Chances are there's a bunch of legal stuff in their contract specifically about that.
The problem here is what Devin outlined. Should someone be able to gain a bunch of knowledge at a company, then leave the company and design essentially the same game from the ground up before what they used to be working on was even released. That's very murky legal water to explore. Even if you absolutely hate Nexxon (which I do), it's hard to believe they have absolutely 0 case here.
And what's weird about it is that Dark and Darker is very tied up now in a legal battle. Even if they came out on top, I would bet you that there's going to be several publishers scrambling to make dark and darker 'clones' right now. You can't own a genre, and Nexxon can't sue a studio that has absolutely nothing to do with them for making something in the same genre.
@@WhyRUclipsSucks Haven't seen any evidence to indicate that actually occurred.
I know people who are fans of the game have been doing mental gymnastics trying to explain why it's not the same game. How ever when the lead developer and 11 others who worked on this game for over a year, leave and restart the project under a new name, the game is technically stolen. Doesn't matter if they bought or used the same free assets, remade it from the ground up, or if Nexon canceled it. It's the same game being developed. They are liable under any contracts they signed while employees of Nexon. There really is no dancing around this, it was the same game being made, they admitted as much.
I'm always in favor of indie devs passion projects over bigger studios but I don't trust either party to give us a straight answer.
Absolutely not, that is a really bad take on this! This is like trying to gatekeep former pizza restaurant workers from opening their own pizza restaurant. "No you are only allowed to open a burger restaurant". A game developer is allowed to make what ever game he wants to do. Stop trying to gatekeep people.
@@Mobay18 First off, deep breaths, no one is trying to gate keep anyone, we all love you.
The lead developer and 11 other prominent members of that team continued development of a game from a former employer. They admitted as much. If they hadn't been part of Nexon and it's development of the game then they would be fine. That is the unbiased truth of the situation.
Just like when Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea from a project he was working on called harvard connection, he ghosted the owners of that project to go create a less exclusive version for an international audience called Facebook. Different code, different name, expanded idea, he still got sued had to pay a lot of people.
Good day sir.
Hey Devin, Unreal developer here. It's very common in industry practice to use prefixes (and occasionally suffixes) for file names i.e (blueprint)BP_DoorUnlock (Static Mesh) SM_WoodenDoor etc would be a very common across studios, and given the likely hood that a "wooden door" is likely going to be called a "wooden door" by pretty much anyone, the chance that the file names could be similar is very very likely, the actual elements behind the file name (blueprint script/model) would be what you'd have to look at to determine if the files were indeed stolen.
And IronMace has said in actuality there's only 41 files with similar naming conventions after removing the Unreal store bought, and those are explained through Recommended file naming conventions lol.
BP_Door_Wood is also an option. But then getting artists to stick to a sensible naming convention can be an impossible task.
I'm assuming the video creator missed that part of the announcement, but Ironmace made it pretty clear in their response.
@@Bozemoto Yeah except Door_Wood makes no sense because that's not how English functions. If you wanna know more about why variables and files are named in such way, you should read Uncle Bob's CLEAN coding book. He goes in detail why we name our variables in a certain way. To your point, BP_Wood_Door would make little sense when in English, adjectives ALWAYS go before nouns. You want to make your code look as much as possible to English sentences.
@@tatsunithelennyking2540 That's just not true. If you have many doors of a variety of materials, you might start with the word Door so that when alphabetized in the project folder all doors are together (or so you can easily search for all doors by entering "BP_Door_"). For example, BP_Door_Wood would be preferred in a situation where you also had BP_Door_Metal, BP_Door_Stone, and BP_Door_Wood_Double.
Assets are not named the same way that code variables are because you use them differently. Variables have to be read in-line while trying to understand code. Assets are almost never used that way. Instead, assets have to be searched and organized, which means naming needs to favor accurate categorization and standard conventions over readability.
"In the real world Goliath wins and then sells all the silk that your widow spins."
In terms of file names being the same or similar, I don't believe that means much of anything. If they did diff comparisons of the files and they were extremely similar (90 to 100%) that would be far more convincing.
In programming there are certain conventions for file naming and file placement within the directory structure. For instance if you have a code file that interacts with the file system (create, read, update, delete) you will likely name it FileHandler and place it in the handlers folder.
The games are made using the same engine, they share a common setting, and are of the same genre. So it's possible that the filename matching is just a coincidence.
Nexon did not have access to the uncompressed code files at the time of issuing the DMCA request. Likely that was obtained in the police raid.
If your employees are at will then they should be allowed to walk and create a competing product. The company doesn't own them. If they don't steal assets that's their knowledge and it is up to the company to incentivize employees to stay. Otherwise you end up with McDonald's suing former employees when they switch to working for Wendy's because they learned "trade secrets" at McDonald's
Maybe you can have a severance bonus tied to a noncompete agreement.
The company doesn't own its employees, but it owns the ideas created using its resources.
The ideas created with Nexon's investments are vital to the survival of the company, and this applies to similar companies. Ideas are a one-time thing and are essential to the success of a product. For instance, imagine a small company announcing a new product, but their idea is stolen by a large company and released before the smaller company even has a chance to launch their product. This is a significant problem because that product is a primary reason for the survival and success of that small company. If it gets stolen, the company may fail. Similarly, the ideas for games are incredibly important to companies like Nexon. When an employee leaves and copies all the ideas for a game being created by Nexon, which they were specifically hired to generate, it becomes a significant issue for Nexon. Essentially, the employee makes Nexon's investment a net negative. Nexon paid its employees to collaborate and generate ideas under its administration, but if one leaves and creates the same idea under a competing company, Nexon just paid for the success of that company because of one individual who didn't like Nexon.
Regarding incentivizing employees to stay, in a broad scope, a company can't make every employee satisfied. No company in the world can do this. So eventually, even under the best gaming companies, one person may just leave and copy an idea for any game that they were merely a part of developing.
In response to the McDonald's example, if some employees working at McDonald's create the "secret formula" for their newest menu item, and one of them leaves, stealing all the ideas created by the group of people being hired by McDonald's for their latest product, and gives it to Wendy's, it would be a massive deal and an easy lawsuit
tldr; ideas for games cant exist without the company and shouldnt be given to competing companies because of one individual
Contracts can last years after leaving
That’s just not how the business world works though, anything created during your tenure belong to the company, not you. Sometimes you can have wording changed to allow employees to take on pet projects on their own, but I doubt that’s the case with a billion-dollar company.
Hope it works out, but I wouldn’t bet on it. They’ll just get tied up with lawsuits they can’t afford until the fight isn’t worth continuing smh
@@grungilius Exactly this, I'm honestly surprised not more people are considering this
moistcritikals take on this is actually imo a dangerous one. take the extreme inverse of this. a small start up company has a great idea but due to their small size it will take forever to be made. they hire new people and they explain the whole thing in great detail so that everyone on board can get to work. however, there is a blizzard/ea "spy" that got hired in and then this is such a great idea that after hearing of this they leave and tell blizzard about this idea. blizzard and their big team then make it way faster and they capitalize on the idea instead of the small company.
this is basically the same as what they did assuming what was said in this video is correct with it being a big company was stolen from by a smaller one.
also, i cant remember if it was said in the video but its a BIG difference if p3 was canceled and IM left to bring it back to life or if they left and nexon reassigned the team members to other projects thus p3 died because they left. in the 2nd case, if i was the court i would 100% give the case to nexon. IM was paid to produce an idea and took the idea and ran.
Just think that this idea is original without checking anything, watch this video - "Secrets stolen" (the mod Nexon doesn't want you to see), wow, original nexon idea!
The real question will be if any of them signed (and got paid for) a non-compete clause prohibiting them from making similar games in this case. Interesting case and could potentially
impact a lot of software developers in South-Korea
Non-competes/NDAs are common in jurisdictions that don't have strict trade secret protection laws (and are hard to enforce as they conflict with protected rights, their value in reality is proportional to the imbalance between parties' ability to finance legal costs to prosecute/defend). South Korea does have strong trade secret protection laws, so private non-compete agreements are neither necessary nor even desirable as they would relax the standard.
It's blatant ip theft, and yes industrial espionage, moist critical take is dumb as hell. No games would ever get built other than by small one man bands because there is no protection or incentive to even start developing games as a dev studio.
The IM crisis is not just an accident that will end in a lawsuit
Currently, many Korean indie games are supported by technology and capital from large companies, and everything is suspended
It is near the end of the Korean indie game world
And DND is not just created by people who left Nexon
Level designers and other developers who are currently left at Nexon have their efforts stolen
Welcome to game design? This is already commonplace in the gaming industry. Callisto Protocol being made by the devs of Dead Space, is one major example and the easiest one to remember in recent memory.
Ex Starcraft Devs have formed Frost Giant Studios and are releasing a game called Stormgate, which will take many elements from Starcraft. (This one should be huge to you guys, I know how popular SC was there) the list g oes on and on and on.
@@ExarchGaming Yeah, except in this case the project leader left with an ongoing project leading to the project being cancelled. If this is to be allowed then no indie games can be made. Big corporations would just buy a person to bring all the data off of small companies if it seems promising and flop the project, who will stop that from happening?
@@집에가고싶다-l2u I mean.... the money part isn't something that happens often, but the actual game development thing does, which is extremely common.
I don't know that it changes just because there is big money behind it, remember Nexon is owned by some huge investment groups, including the saudi public investment fund which has links to the saudi royal family.... im not sure how appropriate it is for someone like nexon to complain about "big money" when they're so heavily invested in by HUGE hedge funds. ya know?
@@집에가고싶다-l2u NDA
I read his sources about the investors pulling out and that article does NOT say what he is saying.
I mean he seems to have genuinely lied about the investors pulling out? I believed everything in the video but I was curious about that specifically and I can't find shit. The article he linked is Hive denying investment, that's it.. it's not "Everyone pulling out" after the police raid.
Why do you have to be realistic Devin? Why do you have to make me cry? (good video though)
16:05 you are implying the investors knew something nefarious that we don't know. That is just pure speculation on your point. They likely just pulled out for the pure reason of the allegations existing. That is more than enough for most investors to get cold feet.
Is everyone really this naïve? Anyone in a decent sized company at a level high enough to be working with and/or creating intellectual property will sign contracts at the start of their employment forfeiting any ability to take any of that IP and use it outside of the company. You keep saying this will set a precedent but there is nothing to set, it already works this way. I don't understand how these guys thought they would get away with this.
everything they've said so far (things they described themselves as Robin Hood) are all lies, and they tried to make a lot of money with instant funding and run away, but they didn't expect Nexon to drop the game and that's the reason why they are cornered now.
well It's just a joke, so you can ignore it.
@@chimc-dy6uh Then why don't they sue on those grounds? They are suing based on violation of copyright, not contract.
@@Localpref416 ? Many people misunderstand that Iron Mace is acting as if they were sued only for copyright but Nexon sued Iron Mace for violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Act.
I can see D&D arguing that they foresaw Nexon binning the project and so spun-off because they wanted to make it real.
The only issue with that is that Devin Nash showed above that the lawsuit actually begun in 2021? Yet they continued producing the project all the way until what, 2 or 3 weeks ago? They had more than enough time to realize that Nexon was not diggin that.
Good review, although I don't think their case is entirely hopeless. The Korean law is vague and makes the burden of proof on companies to prove what a trade secret is very loose, but it's apparently so loose now since the 2019 revision that no one even knows how you're supposed to interpret the law. So this could be a long drawn out case that is going to basically set precedent for what the law is moving forward.
That being said I do agree that from what we know, the case leans in Nexon's favor probably for the 'Trade Secret' part of the lawsuit and especially the personal lawsuit against "Mr. A" seems like he's probably boned. I think I agree with his version of events given, and that the investigation into the 'leak' was basically blown out of proportion as retaliation, but if he doesn't have a paper trail saying he got permission to keep the server up and Nexon has a paper trail saying they told him to take it down he's kind of fucked. Most he can hope to argue is just disprove any malicious intent like the allegation that he showed P3 material to investors.
That being said I do wonder how the law in Korea works since apparently it sounded like they don't do any sort of NDA or Non-Compete clauses over there and rely on this vague law to enforce it. The fact they got a sworn testimony from "Mr. A" announcing his intention to leave the company and inviting employees to join him and say that argues IN THEIR FAVOR is pretty wild. In America if they signed an NDA and they had that on record, case would be open shut in favor of Nexon. Apparently it's not so simple over there, although in America if there was no agreement in their contract Nexon would be shit out of luck too.
Doesnt really matter. even nexon loses in court first place. they can take it all the way to Supreme Court and it will takes years and IM would runs out of money without any income from not being able to publish the game till sue is over
@@dsd2dsd2 Definitely the likely outcome. I think IM is probably going to be forced to settle soon. Nexon is putting on a hard ball façade but I'm pretty sure they'd rather just get Publishing Rights than go through this whole rigmarole. It'd be much cheaper to just lobby politicians and ask them to amend the law to be less vague for the future, and include Digital Asset specific clauses since there's none, so I don't see the point of bringing it up to the SC just to 'prove a point'. And they'll have to spend their own money to revive P3 on their own with a new team as well, why not just leverage IM's team anyway and keep the market share they've already gained?
@@amongstus4418 They are probably not going to revive P3. Doubt IM team would join back to Nexon too. Cause according to IM. Nexon already suggested that and They turned it down. so kinda too late for it.
I appreciate you keeping it real as always. I watched charlies video earlier and didnt realize he left out like 90% of the story. Keep up the good work!
This is the best explanation of this situation with the least amount of bias and the most amount of research that I've seen. Also, former South Korean President Park Geun-hye is a criminal who was exposed for her corruption (it involves a cult and she bribed ppl using government funds), impeached, and ultimately sentenced to 20 years in prison before being presidentially pardoned, so the first case example of corporate favoritism involving the SK Group is not a great example imo.
I think if the question is "Was the idea from the Devs itself on a vacuum, or they only came up with it because they worked on P3?" then the answer is of course yes, it only happened because they worked on P3... but the thing is: is that a crime? Devin said that it would make pretty difficult for companies like Blizzard/2K/Rockstar etc to make a game, and my opinion in this is: *yes, so what?* That would make so those companies actually pay and treat devs well, if they(the companies) don't wanna them to leave and do it by themselves then make it worth for them(the devs), wich is really easy for big companies since they do have way more resources than a small group of devs... it's capitalism...
~And just to end: I think in this case, on a ethical point of view, both Ironmace and Nexon acted on bad faith, Nexon cancelled the project even though it maybe had potential, and it's only going forth with this because Ironmance made somewhat a success with the game, I highly doubt they would care if the game was never good, at least this isn't how the things would went, and so did with Ironmace trying to take the game for themselves... What I'm trying to say is, it doesn't matter what side you choose, both of them are companies that aren't ethical, and that's the reality to the most of companies in the world, no one care about being ethical, they care about money.
-And talking legally, well I can see both being right, with Ironmace saying it wasn't stolen, specially since it's a bunch of U4 assets, and you can't really say anything, or at least not much about the source code, and this being a very non-professional decision on Nexon's side, using brought assets from U4 store, even if it's placeholders, why is this unprofessional? Well look what's happening, this would never happen if it was all from scratch, specially a company with so many resources... but I would say it's way to naive say that it doesn't look way to similar to not be some level of copy, and again, maybe only being possible because they worked on P3.
~~Again very grey case, where there's lots of rights and wrongs, and you should wait to se what happen, and honestly for me as costumer *I DON'T GIVE A FUCK FOR ANY OF THE COMPANIES, I WANT A GOOD GAME,* it doesn't matter from who it comes from...
Choi didnt "leave" he got fired. for trying to convince his co workers to leave the company with him + stealing the projects.
He didn't have to try very hard now, did he? Maybe pay employees properly and listen to the vision of developers instead of being a emotionless corporation focused on equity for bonuses to CEOs.
@@Foojeez Lol you saying Nexon didnt play employees? and listen t o the vision of devs? So where is the evidance that nexon didnt listen to devs or pay well to devs.
@@dsd2dsd2 Are you daft? You quite literally answered the question in your own response.
@@Foojeez Then you should've not signed the contract and work there. Simple
@@WhyRUclipsSucks ok big corp shill when you get fucked by greedy companies maybe one day you'll understand
Saw the whole thing, I'd definitely fall into the Dark and Darker fanboy category (even working on making content for it). The info you had on how Korean Law interprets I've not heard yet so that helped paint a more whole picture for me and I appreciate it. That being said, I think your stances miss the mark a bit. I kept wanting to comment before watching the whole video to ask you if you had seen the Discord for Dark and Darker because it didn't seem like you saw the response of IM, the 1000 files Nexon claims to be stolen IM has listed where all of them come from leaving only 80 files (each one appearing twice so really only 40) just have standard naming practices. All in all, great video and maybe I'm drinking the juice too much but I think it's not as one sided as you made it seem in Nexons favor.
It's not really about filenames, even if Nexon messed up on that part. The main case is about employees leaving a company and making a product that's something too similar which they could not have come up with without working at Nexon and getting the internal information and experience. As Devin pointed out, SK law will more likely favor the original company in that case.
Same reason Devin calls copyright a patent. He does his research but misses basic topics. It's not a DMPA it is called a DMCA for a reason.
They took a protected idea and bought assets that looked exactly (or just way too similar) from a marketplace. You don't find this wrong? So if I steal Coca Cola's formula but use different brands of sugar, I'm not breaking copyright and other competition/industry protection laws?
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
@@laranjo5999 If you steal Coca Cola's formula but use different sugar then you're not making Coca Cola and it would taste noticeably different and even still, that argument only works if Coca Cola also got their formula from a third party that is publicly accessible
@@laranjo5999 It is not a protected idea. They don't own generic fantasy aestethics or tropes, or battle royale, or dungeon crawlers. And the devs that left were part of the team that initially pitched the idea to nexon. Nexon never even registered their own game for copyright until over half a year after dark and darker was made public. Which shows just how little they cared about this project until almost half the team left, made their own vision of the game themselves, and started generating massive hype. For context; P3 was first shown all the way back in 2021, which would make the concept public knowledge even if they were the first to come up with it. It's like saying there can't be torchlight because diablo exists. If they have a problem with a similar game looking similar then they should make their own assets. You can't use store-bought assets and then complain that other people's games look too similar. Ironmace is a tiny indie studio with limited funds, and nexon is well nexon. Also their character concept artist is the same guy who was the character concept artist for P3. Honestly as long as no code was stolen nexon just needs to pull up it's big boy pants and learn to compete in a free market. You should see the actual DMCA, it's hilarious. I almost lost it when I got to exhibit E. x'D
it's obvious that justice is on side of Nexon and nothing would change if the court would be held in states, because at the end of the day South Korea are in american zone of influence and all those multi billion corporations more or less are involved with states anyways. The only way for D&D to survive would be to escape outside of american zone of influence, to the country strong enough to withstand US/korean pressure and not complying to american/korean law system, but then again there is a question - are ironmace ready for such a sacrifice?
If the case is as you describe, then there is no place for a DMCA. Nexon pushed for a DMCA. If copyright is not involved, there is no case for a DMCA.
By the way, entire teams quitting is common, and even taking the clients is common. UNLESS their contracts prohibit that, which apparently Nexon forgot, even though it's standard practice in the IT sector.
We (ideally)do NOT permit theft in ANY industry, in ANY country in the world, why would it be ok in gaming, the most PROFITABLE industry?
Ahhhhh. The old "bite the hand that feeds" conundrum.
Question:
Should creators be allowed to just run with the knowledge that someone else paid for, to make it possible for that product to even exist?
Answer:
I would say, absolutely, unequivocally, NO.
It IS theft, it IS biting the hand that feeds, and on top of it? It's lazy, and scummy. They didn't need to make it a carbon copy of P3; they could've changed up the theme, made the venue OUTSIDE maybe? Change the combat, the era, the story, the graphics, and kept the extraction based gameplay that many other titles have been successful with. Instead they have a pattern, a Modus Operandi like any common criminal! Their MO: throw out their own carbon copy 6 months later after saying goodbye to the mother company, with nothing but the name change as usual, like ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THIEF DOES, and bobs your uncle:
You have a gross violation of ethics that endangers the salaries and positions of hardworking, undeserving-of-malice type people with families to feed and such. If Nexon, (OR THE COURT, FOR THAT MATTER) were to permit that; it would become court precedent and the rule of the land and then why bother making a game? lol it'd just be stolen before release.
It's full of fallacy to permit theft, it has connotations of "in for a penny in for a pound," it's an argument that can easily be defeated in court; AND SHOULD. If we permitted it, you know what game development would be like? A big round table surrounded by thieves, all greedily rubbing their hands together, waiting for one of the other thieves to throw anything of value on the table, so they can yoink it and scurry out of a castle full of guards that look the other way as dictated by law. Comically ona sidenote, doesn't that kind of summarize the plot to Dark and Darker ROFL
That couldn't possibly become the reality in the real world ><
Can't believe I'm saying this cuz FUCK NEXON but may God speed, the DEVIL Nexon, in their righteous lawsuit. Can't let the thieves steal from the temple right before the temple is released guys, if it doesn't make sense to you it's because you've never spent the time money and energy to create something and had it stolen and sold.
PS DIRECTORS SHOULD NOT SCREW PRODUCERS! If that was ok we'd have no media at all. Dark and Darker? No. More like Dumb and Dumber.
If they (Nexon) cancel their project then yes it should be ok to recreate it, because theyre holding that 'idea' hostage.
However since Dark and Darker is such a great succes i am ofcourse biased, so I hope they settle their shit and give nexon the portion of the profit they deserve (they really don't but legally ofcourse) so we can just enjoy an actual good game that fuck knows how long hasn't been made.
I heavily encourage defining and drawing lines around what would be considered a trade secret. Everything revolves around this and I would be hard pressed to consider the fantasy theme + generic fantasy unreal market assets as a trade secret.
That being said, is the know-how to stack the ingredients in sandwich to be considered a trade secret? (I do consider the feel, look, and idea of DaD/P3 to be as generic as a sandwich. Though I do like a good sandwich)
"They would not have been able to make this game or have this idea without working at Nexon" is a powerful claim but not one that can be reasonably proved, which then makes me curious if the onus to somehow prove their point somehow land on Ironmace?
It's like if blizzard lost it's mind because some devs left and made torchlight.
It's not that deep. If they have over 10 files identically named after a P3 file.. they are done.
@@tomguglielmo9805 Not really. They would have to look into the actual code.
From ironmace's response: *_"They were kind enough to list all the identical files names after removing the ones that are similar due to the usage of the same engine and appended it to Exhibit D of their takedown claim. Of the remaining 1032 resources listed in Exhibit D with identical names, 950 are due to being identical store-bought assets and plug-ins for the Unreal Engine. The remaining 82 identical resource files (actually 41 resources because the file names are duplicates with variations in the extension names) can be easily explained due to recommended file-naming conventions and general conceptual names that would be similar in a typical First-Person Fantasy game. We would welcome and be happy to do a comparative analysis of the actual content of these identically named files through a 3rd party auditor, if Nexon agrees to provide their files."_*
@@Martial_Autist look, Nex recently patented the codes FOR P3. if DnD has the SAME CODES, they stole from Nex. Your regurgitating a DEFENDING company in a suite. You would actually be a horrendous lawyer for a plaintiff...
@@tomguglielmo9805 Yes like I said they would have to look into the actual code. If nexon claims the code is stolen then they need to show that it is the same. So yes, the first part of your comment is just regurgitating what I just corrected you on. What matters is the content not the name. I mean they have 41 identical names atm, that really says nothing unless the code is a carbon copy of P3's identically named files.
And then in the second part you say I would make a horrible lawyer for the plaintiff or something. Your point?
Can always trust Devin to make an S tier video on a subject.
The fact they poached half the team in this situation really can't be understated. Not only are you taking the concept and development that somebody else paid for, you're then taking half their staff and thus the ability for them to produce that concept as well.
The suits and boots in a studio are never going to see eye to eye on everything, but it's hardly a secret that the higher up rule with an iron fist, and if incidents like this became common place that'd only get worse - Where the last bit of creative sparks in modern releases are squeezed out to protect share holder investments in a project
Need to remember that they scrapped the project, so it's not like they poached them while they were working on said project and thus nexon was unable to finish - they decided themselves they don't want to continue with it so imo it became fair game. Law will most likely see it differently, with ironmace having to give % of the company to nexon.
@@korassssssss I do believe they, I mean Mr. A poached the employees while project was still live thus Nexon had to abandon the project.
@@WhyRUclipsSucks Not even Nexon is claiming they "poached" the employees mid-development.
In what way though is "poaching" illegal in this sense? "Come work for me, we can make a better game" or "Resign with me, this company is dogshit".
A lot of good information here but he has several bad takes as well.
As a dev, this is such a crazy situation. It certainly sounds bad for dark & darker. I think people just side with them because they hate nexon (which i can understand).
I just can't imagine working on a project to turn apples blue at work, then quitting my job, convincing everyone else who worked on the same project to come with me and then making a company to turn apples blue . My (now former) company would almost certainly legally decapitate me even if no actual code was the same. This kind of seems like a textbook situation of why laws like these exist.
Note: I do think companies in usa commonly abuse things like non competes and suing someone for a product they made while employed but not related to their work at all. I basically assumed the dark and darker situation was another one of these cases until i started to hear more.
While I think it's a grey area it's more like I got hired and I came up with an idea for project A, management green lights project A and puts me in charge and gives me the resources to finish project A. 1 year of work and management tells me Project A has been canceled and I will be assigned to other work. Disgruntled I quit and convince half of my old team to come with me because they are also disgruntled. I see how this is illegal or at least legally grey but morally it seems a bit unfair for this dude to come up with a golden game idea just for Nexon to say yes at first then change their mind before giving it a chance o can see why he would want to finish his passion project. Hopefully maybe Nexon can work out a deal rather then both sides saying legal fees.
its more like nexon wanted you to make blue apples but they want to make purple apples then leave and make the purple apples not blue ones, but yeah at the end of the day i just want to play the game
Imagine you have a dream of creating a video game, you go to a company called nexon and start developing the game but it isn't supported so you decide to talk to the company and leave to create a similar project cause the previous one was canceled and you create dark and darker, after sometime developing you start to have an absolute success with your game and your team, then the old company see your success on the project and it makes them feel inferior, so they decide to sue you and try to stop you from succeeding, what a disgusting company
But they are at will workers, no contract
So first thing firsf, Mr.A got fired before p3 project got canceled. (July 22 of 2021) for reasons such as stealing assets and poaching employees.
Second, many employees were 'conviced' by Mr.A and left the company and went to Ironmace in mid august.
Third, because many devs left, p3 project could not continue so it was canceled.
Fourth, P3 project was supposed to be the first game from MintRocket so no, they weren't going to cancel it or whatsoever.
So in conclusion, Mr.A wasn't fired after p3 project got canceled and Nexon did not wanted the project to be canceled.
Devin comes in clutch again (and as usual) with the deep dive, real nitty gritty info we need for something this important and nuanced = GG Devin!
Ironmace "mission" how they are against predatory mtx and casino shit that is immoral conflicts to what they tried to do is not the right way to fight against the things they stand up for. That kind of behavior is sus to say one thing and do the other. I can't ever trust someone that does that.
27 mins! & Dude, been watching you for YEARS and you have helped me grow my side hustle. Didn't know anything about streaming/social media after the military, you sir, are the one that taught me pretty much everything about the business aspect of this. Keep up the great work. I'd watch 2 hours of this just because I KNOW I will learn something.
Still here listening, this gives way more info then what moist posted, literally based all his facts on one side.
Thanks for the informative video bro
Great unbiased and well researched take on the issue. 👍
I think the comparison of diaglo vs dark and darker has a very important detail that you did not express and that is that Diablo has actual assets they created not assets that are available to the public.
No, creating a massive program is *not* comparable with being a bus driver, pizza restaurant owner and gym owner. It's a massive oversimplification. If everything in the world can be compared with a pizza, then the word "trade secret" wouldn't even exist. Then again, even a secret pizza recipe can be a trade secret.
Devin! SAVE THIS GAME PLEASE!
Funny thing is nexon said the “team” that was working on it up and left, therefore they could not finish the p3 project.” Who’s to say that D&D nerds didn’t pitch the idea of the game to nexon that were competent enough to make the game. Also the art and ideas are made from the workers. So if I write a letter for my employer, then write a letter for myself, the hand writing will look similar. So the art work will look similar as well in this situation. Furthermore people leave all kinds of businesses they learn how to do and learn trade secrets from. So in this case any contractor. Or store employee etc. can sue a former employee for starting his own business or company. Every new company could be sued then essentially. Was p3 a game that had the same ideas as dark and darker? We’re they teams of 3 going into a loot/extraction? Or was it just a dungeon crawler? Etc. guess we will see what happens. Great info tho. Will like and sub. Thx. 😎
One huge problem with the games being similar and the “trade secret” argument is P3 revealed (Aug 5th 2021) to the public before DnD was in development (Oct 2021). Korean law is Civil, meaning ‘as written’, so there is little room for interpretation where it states a ‘trade secret’ MUST be something “that is not known publicly”.
But, what constitutes “information” is not defined, so that may spell bad news for Ironmace if Nexon can prove that DnD used some secrets from P3 to develop DnD that could NOT be considered public domain.
Nexon is obviously reaching on some things (Copyright intent on idea of a “Wizard”?), which could actually bite them down the line. They may have a case against DnD somewhere under the mud of all this. Strong or weak? That’s up to the Korean Court system to figure out.
Fantastic video Devin!
10:30 "What this means for the companies?"
It means they should treat their employees, developers better, so they don't want to leave!
I understand that the company spends money on research and development, and people shouldn't be able to take that for free. They shouldn't be able to use the material they created while working for the company, but they should be able to use what they have learnt while working. The company relied on this when they hired them, they hired a (lead) developer with existing experience. That experience came from somewhere: previous jobs, projects, education. They didn't raise a child to a developer.
Yes there are trade secrets that are special cases, but companies tend to try to treat everything as secret even when it's public knowledge or was taught to the employees before they were hired...
23:10 there is only 41 files dude, did you not read the part that they bought those assets from the unity play store?
great video really informative. There was so much support for Ironmace and while understandable, it's worrying that people don't think its an issue just because they are against a big corp. It's not even about the game but people are too parasocial with indie devs.
The main question isn't whether Ironmace stole assets, since they use mostly Unreal marketplace assets, it only serves as Nexon's primary entry into the lawsuit. The real main question, is whether Ironmace stole net code that was developed under Nexon. This net code could have been reused or used as a template/foundation for Ironmace's code. This is very hard to prove.
Does Nexon have a case? Given the current marketplace of games, PUBG clones, LoL clones, souls clones, etc. This is a special case since the lead dev and other employees are former Nexon employees with prior access to P3 code.
To me, on the topic of the video, of employees leaving to create their own company... what the industry can do is "non-compete" agreements. Former employees cannot work for competing companies or create competing companies for x amount of years. I would think this was standard in the gaming industry as it is common in finance/business.
Caught this video when it said "3 minutes ago" and thought it said "3 months ago" and thought Devin could tell the future.
I wish that the lead dev of Diablo 4 did actually do that. Diablo 4 is hot trash.
Awesome explanation. Pure objectivity is rare recently. This should be watched by more people so they can make an informed opinion on the status of this issue.
10:36 We don't know how alike the two games actually are because the P3 project hasn't been released nor have they shown any proof of concept i.e. gameplay, trailers, advertisements, etc. So we're just stuck sitting here taking NEXON's word for it. They're a multi-billion dollar company, with a full year of development under their belt on P3 before DaD was even started, they should have been able to push the product further along and beaten DaD to market. Furthermore, when you look at games like pubg vs fortnite or paladins vs overwatch, there are extreme similarities, yet there's no lawsuit. Especially with Paladins vs Overwatch, there are nearly carbon copies of characters, yet no lawsuit. That's because inspiration of ideas is commonplace in the gaming industry, but you don't sue each other over it unless you're a super greedy billionaire.
16:00 The investors pulled out because of the publicly known allegations. The investors don't have hidden, undisclosed knowledge that hasn't been revealed to the public. The police raid proved to be fruitless and no evidence was brought to the table. In fact, it's more likely that NEXON knew this would scare off investors and get create headlines to damage the company's reputation and make game development more difficult as a result. This does not scare the dark and darker fans who have been watching this closely as this happened months ago and we've all known that it was fruitless.
18:00 Trade Secrets is being misappropriated by NEXON as a buzz word. At least in the US, specifically. Trade secrets in the legal system are defined as "(1) kept secret and (2) valuable because they are kept secret." This game does not utilize any secret designs techniques behind its mechanics. The game is very basic, simple, and straight forward and IM intentionally designs the game that way so that it couldn't violate any copyright laws and was so vague in scope and "story" that it couldn't be considered infringing on any other games or concepts. This is also the case when looking at Chivalry's "random dungeon" mod (see link below). You can clearly see that the idea behind the game type already exists. Tarkov is a very popular example of the genre as well. So clearly we can agree that there are no new game development or mechanics used by IM that NEXON invented.
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=545457243
18:21 Simply put, NEXON cannot legally patent those names in the US as they're too vague and very, very, very, very obviously used in hundreds of thousands of IPs ranging from world of warcraft to dungeons & dragons and even to the film industry like lord of the rings, the green knight, excalibur (or any movie about merlin), harry potter, etc. Those are bullshit patents that were applied for and displayed AFTER IM came to be as a tactic to bring the Korean public to their side.
22:00 The file names was already addressed. They're common file names that are commonly used across MULTIPLE games. "brick_flat_corner_floor" "brick_flat_corner_roof" like of-fucking-course there's going to be MAJOR asset name similarities across ALL games that use similar tile based world building techniques. This is not a valid point nor does it hold any weight and if you even looked at iron mace's dark and darker discord, they addressed that these tile naming techniques are taught publicly in game development conventions. Now consider this, what are the assets default names AND who named the assets if they're not default. If the lead dev named the tiles after acquiring them for P3, then left NEXON and P3, started his own company to make a competitor, and then also named his own assets that he purchased from the same store, how obvious is it that the names might be the same? AGAIN, not a good argument and it holds no weight.
24:15 You make the claim that the classes are too similar to other classes within different universes, but then IMMEDIATELY counter YOURSELF by saying that the side by side comparisons are damning... What am I listening to? Again, if you even took just a moment to look at the discord where they addressed this. IM used the same artist to draw the concepts for the character designs as was used in NEXON. And guess what? The LEAD DEVELOPER of NEXON's p3 game probably is the person who contracted that artist to draw up those designs. So guess what, you can bet your bottom dollar they're going to look similar. But ALL clerics and wizards and rangers and rogues look similar because it's a publicly well known and commonly used class design. C'mon man... This isn't even remotely close to damning.
24:44 the maps look similar. Guess what, they used the same unreal assets for the design of the dungeon. Do we know if P3 has a ruins map design that takes place outside? Do they have a cave system map that takes place in a cave filled with goblins? Or is it just the fact that the first map is a dungeon and that they used the same assets from unreal. That's not an argument for trade secrets. That's one of 4 maps that IM is using. So, again, not a good argument. You wanna talk about copying map or even game design, let's look at Diddy kong racing v Mario Kart, Axiom Verge v Super Metroid, Rockband v Guitar Hero, Bloodstained v Castlevania or even Castlevania v Super Metroid. I P.R.O.M.I.S.E. you NEXON did not invent the idea of a dimly torch light dungeon with brick walls. The idea of NEXON inventing that concept is probably the dumbest thing I've heard tonight. Also there are screenshots in that document that show NEXON using DaD screenshots as their own in place of an actual NEXON image. as seen below:
ruclips.net/video/wHDboj5lw8A/видео.html
33:46 There are more potential outcomes. For example:
7. IM wins and their restraining order is accepted and NEXON has to let them be
or
8. IM moves their company and staff to the US where korean law holds no precedence and their corporatist government influence cannot affect American businesses. Assuming the only court decisions that side with NEXON come from the Korean legal system as I just don't see any US judge siding with NEXON after what we saw via PUBG v Fortnite.
The analogy is a little off and the use of unreal needs to play a larger role in the story
They didn't cancel p4 the devs left and stole evething
On March 8, 2023, the police raided Ironmace's office in Seongnam, in search of evidence over the allegations.[11] On March 24, 2023, Nexon issued a cease and desist notice to Ironmace to pause development of Dark and Darker in relation to the allegations.[1] On March 26, 2023, the game was delisted from the Steam online game store after Nexon filed a DMCA notice.[13]
However, on April 14, 2023, Ironmace announced its fifth public playtest of the game, with the game and subsequent patches distributed through BitTorrent links instead of Steam.[12] On the same day, Nexon filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Ironmace in USA,[14] in response to which Ironmace claimed that the issue lies between Nexon and just one Ironmace employee and it should be settled in South Korea.[15]
halfway thru the vid. and i constantly hear everywhere that P3 has the same mechanics as DnD. i would like to see a demo version of the P3 Game to verify that they were first to have these mechanics. all i know is that they keep claiming our game was going to have this and that and etc. but no actual evidence that their P3 Game would have mechanis like DnD
Edit: i wanted to Main Game that Game too :(((
They don't really need to verify that to you. They just gotta verify that in the court
@@dsd2dsd2 ok
The solution is actually much simpler. Just treat your employees well. Any other industry (even software development outside of games), companies understand this. If you treat your people poorly, and don''t give them a reason to stick around, they will leave, they will switch jobs, and may end up working at a competitor. At least in America, most employment is "at will" rather than contract. I don't know exactly how the gaming industry works but they are rather notorious for mistreating their developers compared to the rest of the software development industry. I also have to agree with the guy who gave the "take"' near the beginning of the video. Not much into legalism or moralism myself, what matters most is that employees are treated right and people are free to work on what they want to, and where they want to. Sure it the amount of money that big companies are willing to put into developing games, but even this (less money, but more passionate, and happier developers) may well be better for the industry in the long term.
Regarding the dark dungeon feature being contested: I hope Almost Human Games sues Nexon because they stole the aesthetics from their game, Legend of Grimrock... oh wait. Or is it that dungeon crawlers are traditionally in dark dungeons with torch mechanics?
There is an entire genre built on these same tropes and visuals: the aforementioned Grimrock games (especially the first one), The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians, Dungeon of Dragon Knight, Heroes of the Monkey Tavern, Skullstone, etc. Just to pull some up. This is why IRONMACE claims Nexon is trying to claim genre tropes.
I could also mention Exanima (that's isometric, though) as having similar visuals and mechanics, and also certain levels of Amnesia: Dark Descent. Because it turns out, light can be a major game mechanic, and torchlight usually matches well with stone walls instead of, I don't know, cinder blocks and plasterboard.
When I watched Charlie's video I had a very similar opinion to yours. We run into this problem more often then you'd think in the tech space. It's not as simple as people think. I was going to mention it on his video, but nobody would have seen it anyway. Thanks for saying what I was thinking.
im sorry devin, IMO if you create completely new code from top to bottom, completely free-use and self-developed assets, and you release your game before a completely separate company: take the bag. Ironmace had the bigger drive to make this game than nexon.
sure, this game was inspired by P2, but i dont believe someone can own the idea of "medieval extraction game". that completely stifles growth for these genres.
P2 you mean p3?
@@WhyRUclipsSucks yup yup
@@GOLDENKAIOKEN then you would also know that Nexon sued Ironmace(Mr.A specifically) for violation of the Act on the Prevention of Unfair Competition and Protection of Trade Secrets, and allegations of violating the Act on Aggravated Punishment for Specific Economic Crimes and others right? Not just because they made game with same 'gerne'?
@@GOLDENKAIOKEN you made the mistake of replying to the nexon goblin that spams propaganda under every comment positive towards Ironmace. No hope in squabbling with a fool who mindlessly shills for a corporation that would rob him dry if it wasn't illegal.
8:59 Easy. They shouldn't. Because who then decides who can use these codes/assets/ideas? Let's say the original team has 30 people. 5 people leave and they make their own game based on the one they were working on for the company. And then another 5 leave and create their own game. And then another 5 leave and create their own game. So now we have 3 different teams with 3 different games. The games will be strinkingly similar. And now each of these teams can sue the other 2 teams of stealing their IP. So how would you deal with that? Whoever leaves the company first gets the exclusive rights? That would be funny.
Whatever you do for the company belongs to the company, unless stated otherwise. It's the same with music industry - a musician working under a big label can't even perform his own songs in public without the label's permission, even though he was the one who composed it, wrote the lyrics, and performed it originally.
(PS. Still here at 27 mins)
Ironmace was founded by Terence Park Seung-ha (also known as Terence[8][9] on the Dark and Darker Discord) in October 2021, who was also in the P3 project team.[10][11] Since the disbandment of the P3 development team, the core of the development work was reworked into another tentatively titled game, P7.[11] Ironmace denied the allegations, stating that the game genre could not be copyrighted and the game was created from ground up using Unreal Engine assets and handmade code.[12]
Have not finished the video yet but I think as of right now is cut and clear at the statement of them working for the company. Anything they worked or developed durringt their employement was not theres to take right? Fo example, if A machinist creates a custom piece at his job, for his job. He by law can't go and sell that pieces to someone else?
27min We here baby!
"If this precedent is allowed" that game devs can walk with their skills it changes the whole game industry in an exclusively positive way. Game developers own their skills and know-how, and the more devs are encouraged to leave large abusive businesses and do their own thing, as long as they do not steal copyrighted materials, the better.
The precedent that game devs are not allowed to use their own skills and compete with a prior employer is anti-competitive and bad for all of us. This is not a matter of just "we like dark and darker" this is a matter of, if nexon is allowed to do this, it is objectively terrible for the entire industry and all game developers everywhere.
My first thoughts when hearing about this situation was "Nexon is just bitter, because their employees continued a project that they canned." After hearing your whole video though... I am now very worried for Ironmace.
Unfair competition? If the game was cancelled how are they competition?
as a game developer, my concerne would be a company saying " you made X game in this genera for us, therefor, you cant make any game like this on your own time or for a future company".
I wonder how likely this is to become an issue or not?
Something to keep in mind that there *has* been a sort of precedent. Blue Hall (who now we know as KRAFTON) had its history with NC, the developers of Lineage games. They left while developing Lineage 3, made TERA, got sued, and NC did win but with no damage proven (i.e. could not prove that they suffered the damage they claimed by the incidence). A part of reason why there is a discrepancy between when Project P3 was halted/scrapped may have to do with this, as Nexon would like to argue that the project got halted because they lost a chunk of dev team, while IM would like to argue that the project was halted before the exodus happened (i.e. they are not responsible for the potential lost revenue). Also 27 min mark.
that case is different.
In Terra's case, 'after the project drop' employees left, and in the case of Dark & Darker, 'project in progress' employees left.
As evidence, after July 2021, when the director was fired for disciplinary action, Nexon introduced p3 as a game still in development in August 2021,
However, later, the staff leaved sothe project was canceled.
@@chimc-dy6uh are you sure? Wasn’t one of NC’s claims that “because many people left, Lineage 3 project dropped and we lost money”? That argument wasn’t accepted in the court but that doesn’t mean that the sequence or the event was wrong.
@@AceaIvaliasorry ,When I used a translator, I couldn't confirm that the expression 'drop' was written but I still feel the same way. I'll explain in more detail. In the case of the Terra, you need to know the company environment in NC. NC is divided into a business team and a development team. The business team is always on top, and the development team is always on the bottom. The development team was uncomfortable with the business team constantly intervening in the work in such a situation, and requested creating their own studio as a group of development teams. However, NC rejected these requests and instead took their desks out of the office.(in word) In this situation, the project was virtually stopped, and the development team, who could not stand it, left the company and made a game. this is the outline of the Terra.
Plagiarism exists everywhere. Nothing is original these days. Even where there are patents, copycat products can exist legally.
The main potential crime in my mind is only if Ironmace reused exact same lines of code or textures that came directly from P3 (within reason, since some code is always written in the same way). Unreal Engine 5 assets do not belong to Nexon. Game genres are not exclusive to any single company. Nexon dropped creating P3 before Ironmace became a thing.
I hope Ironmace has been honest, which means Dark and Darker and Ironmace should prevail.
I just don't understand how anyone can DMCA a game like this without a court ruling. This could mean that any fool can go out at DMCA random games!? WTF!
We don't know everything, but I seriously hope some ANON hacker folks bend over Nexon if Nexon are bullying Ironmace unjustly.
The issue with holding very strictly to the letter of the law is that it doesn't allow for room to make rulings based on cases not accounted for by said laws.
- Investors pull out after police raid.
No shit, anyone would, Nexon could of literally sent the police to do this to scare of investors.
No offense but this guy does not know SK culture, Nexon's history, or the pull Nexon has.
Nexon scaring off Tencent? lol ya i doubt it.
Could have or could've
You said it yourself. The case is about "There's no possible way Ironmace could have made dark and darker without stealing trade secrets". Well, good thing the project wasn't a secret I guess. How can the concept of a fantasy extraction dungeon crawler be "trade secrets" if they made it public, and multiple sources reported on it..
I don't think you understand announcing the game has nothing to do with trade secret right ? But actually taking and leaking the project file ? Like for example. If military announcing they are making new weapon now 1 soldier got caught having classified info about the weapon on his personal computer he will be charged.
@@dsd2dsd2 You would have to be able to prove that game code developed in house at Nexon for P3 was used to make Dark and Darker, otherwise they are just suing someone for copying a game they publicly announced.
I highly doubt IM will come out of this unscathed. This makes me sad, they were really putting a light at the end of dark gaming tunnel with their mission.
Don't worry we'll probably get a Chinese and a Russian version soon enough.
@@briancho237 which is gonna suck ass
What is stoping the developers from just moving to Singapore or somewhere like that and starting the whole game over with minor changes?
Personally I would want Dark & Darker to be fine and get released. For the good of the industry and further game development, if this is everything we know about the subject, I hope Nexon wins. Because holy shit, literally NOBODY will be able to get funding for another game without super stringent contracts, contracts that very skilled and experienced developers just WONT WANT to sign. So you end up with unexperienced, potentially less talented devs on any new game.
I do NOT want to see this decline of game development. (More than it already is in some cases.)
You can quit but you can't take a company car.
I hate everything that you've said with a passion cause you have a really persuasive argument that shows the facts and makes a lot of sense, but I'm going to be huffing my copium for the next couple months/years. Mainly cause I haven't played a game that has made me feel this amount of enjoyment since I was a kid.
**huff** They better extend the next playtest because of this.
So I just got banned from the Dark and Darker subreddit for posting this video. Not sure why they weren't allowing it, but this is a first for me.
@Artiii020 subreddit is not a good place for sharing both side of story😅
It's hard to hear this as a Dark and darker fanatic, but the evidence you collected as well as your fact based analysis is too strong to fault 😢 #CASTBLESSIMCASTJUDGEMENTNEXON
I love Dark and Darker too but I'd let the lawsuit play out. I will say this, they didn't start a lawsuit for the hell of it. They probably have some grounds. In the end, hopefully both games come out.
I wonder, can they just fold their company right now, forget about Dark and Darker, piss off to America where the court system would be more favorable to them, and start a "new" project with new name? All that to avoid the highly likely unfavorable court ruling and setting a bad precedent.
it makes me happy that I can get unbiased info, it makes me sad that no DnD is a reality.
I really appreciate you for presenting the facts despite your bias. On one end I love Dark and Darker, and I think Ironmace pulled a Robin Hood on Nexon. 100% this game is amazing and would have never been this good under Nexon (or ever even made). On the other end I def see why setting this presedent would open up a can of worms.
Look up Mintrocket and Dave the diver. It's sub-brand of Nexon, focusing on developments of more indie-style games with no toxic BM. P3 was being developed under Mintrocket, it was supposed to be released before Dave the diver before Ironmace bombed the P3 team and left. As much as I hate Nexon, calling Ironmace a Robin Hood?
Honestly,even the example with Blizzard he used... Sounded good to me. Predatory companies getting bit in the ass for their bullshit by the talented people they overwork and underpay? Hell yes. Oh,you don't want to invest your millions on game because the developers can no longer handle mistreatment? Don't worry, someone else will come along to do it for you.Crowdfunded games are a thing, they work. Early access, games when done right, are great. AAA games in recent years are mostly early access anyway, just without the tag :)
@@vladbekish6198 mr A was supposedly mistreating his team while working with nexon yelling and berating them and more
@@nightvolt9572 Where the heck did you get that info?Also if that were the case, why would they follow him into Ironmace? Xd Sounds like a bit of bs claim
I hear your argument about setting a precedent of people leaving a company to build thier own game after learning trade secrets ect; However I would say that this is a product of living in a free market society. For example lets say you are training to be a bus driver; they pay for your CDL and training but then you learn that the company is a greedy pile of garbage and want to leave to go work somewhere else or start your own transportation company. Should you be forced to either stay at a company you hate or work a different job in fear that you would use the training you gained to compete with them? No, I feel that the freedom to leave is important because it forces the company to innovate and look inward on how to do better. Companies would be more likely to treat staff better while practicing better ethics if they knew that thier workers had the freedom to go thier own way. If the only way you can prevent workers from leaving and creating a better game is by force, then maybe you should just do better as a company yourself. I understand this isnt a perfectly accurate comparison i'm just explaining my point of view.
I don’t know man I feel like if nexon wins this then it could establish a very scary precedent. Basically anyone leaving a company will be forced to work in an entirely different genre or there could be enough similarities to call it infringement of trade secrets. As a TTRPG player it would be like WoTC coming after Paizo for Pathfinder because some of their designers worked on 4e and the games both use d20s and skills to resolve challenges
If ironmace wins that means a lot of people will claim that company's work done by them is mine and leave, and as a result, many companies will be closed.
Basically, Iron Mace ran away with Nexon's IP. Don't forget that part. Ironmace bought Nexon's wrath when they tried to make Nexon's work his own. Despite such a situation, Nexon even offered to collaborate with Ironmace, but Ironmace declined that offer. I think this is digging a grave with your own hands.
@@SUDDENROCK I disagree that they stole IP unless there is additional evidence that is not being made public that shows IM has exact concepts like boss mechanics or designs from P3’s development. What is currently being discussed publicly falls under genre and game mechanics which aren’t IP. However they could still be in violation of using trade secrets with the implementation of those mechanics and genre which is what is being discussed here
@@SUDDENROCKBut was P3 canceled or not? Because if it's been canceled by Nexon, it's like someone's enraged because after throwing his useless toy in the trash, claim it back when he see someone else pick it up, transform it into something spectacular, and turn it in gold.
@@Gio95066 P3 canceled because some of project members trying to steal project and take out many project members from nexon. You should know what comes first man...Maybe we can play P3 now if project going smooth without any legal problem.
The investors bailing is a really bad sign. Even if they've done nothing wrong, having no investment means the game is dead in the water.
Mr. Choi was fired in August 2021, and was part of half of the 20-member P3 project team who would subsequently join Ironmace.
THANK YOU FOR PROVIDING THE TRUTH ON DARK AND DARKER! now we cast JUDGEMENT on Nexon and cast BLESS on Ironmace🙏
Cope
Mica Vista Uihlean!
He probably got paid for making the game, and then everything about the game should be the companys, fells like a greddy move from IM side even if noxon is a bad company
Thanks for all the effort you put in for this video. It helped a lot with my understanding of the situation! Also, here's my 27-minute-mark check-in.
I'm just on the half, I will watch to the End, but I spent my 2 cents now, because I don't think you will change my mind anyways: "Should that be allowed that the Employees leave the company and make the same product better?" absolutly yes. Ofc I'm not allowed to use actual stuff i've written for the company i was working for, but I'm definitifly allowed to do that. So Diaglo 1 could be a thing, while it doesn't use ANYTHING of Diablo 4 itself. Path of Exile, exists.
it would be even worse if something like that happened to an indie studio, im also kind of suprised there is nothing in the contract to prevent something like that from happeneing
This is pretty simple. IF any assets developed for p3 were indeed copied and stolen and used in DnD then they fucked up. If not P3 team needs to prove that they have a unique cost to develop the idea that was infringed. If they can't satisfy either condition they should not be able to make further punitive claims.
Was the game good ? Yes
but is it stolen, 100000%
nah
fuck patent squatting and fuck IPs
@Jorgim The Guy if you actually beleive this. You're an idiot lol. Sorry to say
I do think IP and copyright last for to long though.
Knowledge about the ingame development is not trade secret.
The fact that Nexon was building a FPS medieval extraction game doesnt mean they have the right to stop the formal employees of making a FPS medieval extraction game. The game development its no just knowledge/ideas , if game is just ideas, everyone player is a gamedeveloper. everyone has ideas.
The game is build upon thousand of thousand of lines of code , game assets , hundreds of hours to create algorithms .
CODE - ASSETS - GAME ENGINE
code was supposetly build from scratch.
assets were bought from the store.
game engine is open to the public.
Equals ... the game was not stolen.
If you think a game developer cant build a game from what he can remember/what he learned working on a company.
What are you gonna do about ?
lobotomize the developers after they leave the company?
I think people are blowing this out of proportion.
It is the court's decision not you, to judge guilt or innocence. It is not up to us to know the details of the law. You can only know very fragmented information that is floating around on the Internet. We don't know exactly what happened.
I have a question! If the main game developer , who went to Ironmace after working on P3, was the one who pitched and made said idea of dungeon delving game ,and there is documented proof of this, would any of the trade secrets act part of "could not have made said idea without being involved with P3" still apply? That would have made a point morally, debatably, but what about legally?
Thank you for your video,very informative.
Very good question I'm curious about this as well!! If the game was the IronMace dev's original idea, could that help the case?!?!? Good point
If the main developer was an employee under Nexon then anything he produces is owned by Nexon. There is nothing debatable about that, be it morally or legally. If he is not happy about it he should never have accepted Nexon's salary in the first place.