Fotisi
More is coming from Ironmace over the weekend as one of its devs posts the GoFundMe link for its not yet ready legal defense campaign. An unexpected move that caught the core team and their Dark and Darker Discord moderators by surprise, leading to widespread confusion at the time. With more unofficial and scam campaigns popping up to take advantage.
The company is currently facing accusations of using stolen code and assets in their game Dark and Darker by gaming giant Nexon. Which has led to the game being removed from Steam and their offices being raided by South Korean police.
However, Ironmace has pushed back on those accusations, claiming that the code was made from scratch. Also publishing a compiled spreadsheet listing where they attained all the used assets. Majority coming from the Unreal Engine Marketplace.
The campaign would help with covering legal and other expenses in dealing with the Nexon case.
Unbeknownst to the rest of the team, developer Luci aired out their frustrations late Friday night, early Saturday morning their time. Expressing the hard work and dedication put in by the team and its leadership. Accuses Nexon of drying to crush the company by bleeding them dry in legal fees. And worries of the team being able to make it through the current legal battles. But what garnered the most attention from this post was the inclusion of a GoFundMe link.
Ima be honest with you guys. Terence and sdf aren't aware that I'm making this post, but I am going to regardless. The least I can do is give you guys the truth of what's going on. I've watched sdf and Terry bust their ass everyday for the past year to create this game for all of us. When we first opened shop, we literally had nothing. Through the cold winter our dev team was working overnight shifts in the office with sleeping bags and no heat simply because this project is not our job, it's our passion. Having the opportunity to touch the lives of millions of gamers with a game that makes them happy and might help them through a stressful day is our dream. You guys are our motivation and always will be.
We aren't a big ass studio, and we don't have an infinite supply of money like Nexon. The reality of the situation is that their end goal is to bleed us dry in court fees. Internally, we know this, they know this, the lawyers know this. They have no real case that will hold up in court but they pray that we fold. Our concern is not the false claims that they have weasled up and fed to every media outlet. Our game was made from scratch. But we are concerned about being able to support ourselves through this legal battle that they want to drag us through.
So I am coming to you guys to ask for help and support to get us through this bullshit. Terence and sdf are stressed the fuck out because we don't know if we'll be able to sustain a long term legal battle even with the truth on our side. If we have the funding to defend ourselves in court, we will make it through this and we WILL create the games that gamers around the world have wanted for such a long time but haven't had in recent years.
In Nexons most recent copy-paste MMORPG, they literally named the tutorial boss "Leader of Silver Sun - Terence", to try and mock us and the situation we're dealing with. They can mock us, but they aren't going to take Dark and Darker away from you guys.
I've set up a gofundme that you guys can donate to here to support us in our battle. Any donation given will be used to fund our legal battle against Nexon and fund our development team to continue working on our game: [Removed]
Thank you to all of our fans and content creators like Moistcritikal that have kept it real through all of this. We will make it through for you guys.
Due to the unplanned nature and lack of communication between the core team and their Discord moderators, the mods went into lockdown. Removing Luci post twice and limiting text chats in the server. Posting that they were unsure if the dev's account was hacked, "As of the moment, since we aren't able to confirm if the post in #announcements was made by Luci and not the result of their account getting hacked. We as moderators of this community took the responsibility of removing it but, it is now posted again by the same account. Please do not send any donations to this link until further notice by someone else then Luci."
Internal communications sorted things out, with the mods coming out saying that the post was a, "passionate member of the team taking matters into his own hands."
Moderator Graysun stating, "Hello @everyone! This morning an announcement was posted regarding a GoFundMe link to support Ironmace. The GoFundMe link is legitimate, however it was to be used later if necessary. It was posted this morning without approval due to a passionate member of the team taking matters into his own hands. We have currently paused the campaign for now as it was prematurely announced. We appreciate the enormous amount of support shown in such a little amount of time! We are very sorry for the confusion and will take the proper steps to resolve this within the next few hours. We will make another announcement on how the GoFundMe will be handled. Thank you all very much!"
The campaign was able to raise above $46,000 in the short period of time it was live according to PCGamer.
Dev sdf tried to clear up some confusion on Sunday, posting in their announcements channel, "Other than officially me or Terry asking you for help, all requests for donations to IRONMACE are SCAMS. Beware of scams that exist online, and never donate. Our official fundraiser page is currently paused until further notice so any public donation pages should be taken as a scam. Terry or I will announce when our official donation page is live. We are very sorry for the confusion caused by our mistake."
Later adding, "Just to be clear, the previous fundraising was legitimate just not at the time we planned, thank you."
As of publication there is not an official GoFundMe campaign from Ironmace.
Copyright © 2023 Fotisi. All Rights Reserved.
