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It's amazing that the most basic dungeons and dragons game that looks like a unity asset flip would end up in this situation. Weren't Nexon the ones who forged Richard Garriott's signature on some stock documents while he was in space and had to pay out the nose for doing it?
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# ? Mar 27, 2023 14:40 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 22:00 |
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Nexon is a gorilla in that market and is banking on a combination of that and their deeper pockets destroying/outlasting ironmace.
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# ? Mar 28, 2023 06:26 |
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Groovelord Neato posted:It's amazing that the most basic dungeons and dragons game that looks like a unity asset flip would end up in this situation. I think that was NCSoft
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# ? Mar 28, 2023 06:37 |
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There's some kind of metaphor in here. A company makes up a property but doesn't like it very much, so cans the project. A bunch of people involved decide they want to make that project, so go off and build it from scratch, but it's pretty popular and now the company is suing for ownership of a property they didn't even want to use. Like I understand the legal situation but there is something so infuriating about a company actively throwing away a good idea and then crying foul only because it stands to make money. Do you think they tried to buy-out D&D first? Can they acquire it if they win?
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# ? Mar 28, 2023 09:00 |
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Concurred posted:I think that was NCSoft You are correct. Sorry to slander you Nexon please do not sue me. Mendrian posted:There's some kind of metaphor in here. I missed that they canned the project. How does it get more ridiculous lol
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# ? Mar 28, 2023 14:11 |
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the more I read the more I feel Ironmace is gonna be alright, and I hope this gets resolved quickly what I find interesting is watching the official discord and all the accounts coming in to defend Nexon, its really funny. Did they pay bots to come in and defend them? I've never seen that happen before with a game. Lots of disinformation and backstabbing.
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# ? Mar 28, 2023 15:14 |
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Looks like there will be an announcement of some kind from the devs later tonight (tomorrow in Korea) so hopefully we’ll have a status update
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# ? Mar 28, 2023 22:43 |
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Here is the announcement, just posted a few minutes ago: https://imgur.com/a/d2o49ir https://discord.com/channels/988365908009447485/988662112454836234/1090510064609140867 Discord link included if you want faster links. So, nothing extraodinary. It's basically a summary of their main evidence.
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# ? Mar 29, 2023 06:43 |
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This is kind of the main thing: A bit of background history regarding IRONMACE. Several of our founding members started work as a development team starting in September 2021. The members worked for more than a month in a shabby jiujitsu gym without pay using our own personal PCs as a test of our resolve and teamwork, and also because we had no investors. Once we realized that our members could form the foundations of a viable company, the company was formally founded in late October 2021. The original funds were quickly exhausted and IRONMACE almost went bankrupt as we were unable to acquire investors. Luckily members rallied together and collected funds from over twenty friends and families to bankroll the company for another couple months. This was also quickly exhausted and IRONMACE relied on outsourcing work unrelated to game development to help it survive another month. It was only through grueling meetings and countless, countless, countless rejections that IRONMACE was finally able to find brave VCs willing to fund the studio in 2022. The studio made it point to accept as little money as possible to stay hungry and motivated to get to the current point. They are summing it up as they need funding to fight legal fees. They just don't want to directly ask.
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# ? Mar 29, 2023 06:47 |
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Kira has a pretty good video on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm7AhJoUdJU that seems to be about how people are largely missing the actual points in the lawsuit. They aren't suing over the store assets in and of themselves, but how the store assets are used to replicate P3. Korean law, which I assume a lot of internet posters aren't familiar with for obvious reasons, has laws about 'trade secrets'. In this case, this amounts to "Could they have made Dark And Darker how it is without their knowledge of P3?". This has a few legs to stand on since Ironmace admitted to having taken Nexon assets and code without permission, and yeah you can absolutely see the resemblance. If they had done this with a team without any connection to P3, 'trade secrets' wouldn't apply. I hate Nexon, but I definitely wouldn't support a company that did bullshit even if it was against Nexon. ShowTime posted:This is kind of the main thing: According to some Korean rumblings I've seen, there was a scandal about Ironmace that turned a lot of the Korea community against them, in that it was discovered they actually are subordinate to a Nexon rival and aren't at poor and scrappy as they claim. I'll look for confirmation. Franks Happy Place posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx-yi57cdyQ&t=326s Aren't some of those those engine files generated by the user and are not prepackaged? That is to say, you could tie them as being actual files that Nexon generated, and could be used as proof that the files with them were stolen? Kchama fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Mar 29, 2023 |
# ? Mar 29, 2023 14:08 |
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just work out a deal, give Nexon a slice of the pie and lets loving go
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# ? Mar 29, 2023 15:04 |
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Waiting for a clone would suck both because of the timeframe and the inevitability they gently caress something up and make a core aspect worse.
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# ? Mar 29, 2023 15:53 |
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Kchama posted:I hate Nexon, but I definitely wouldn't support a company that did bullshit even if it was against Nexon. Kchama posted:According to some Korean rumblings I've seen, there was a scandal about Ironmace that turned a lot of the Korea community against them, in that it was discovered they actually are subordinate to a Nexon rival and aren't at poor and scrappy as they claim. I'll look for confirmation.
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# ? Mar 29, 2023 17:17 |
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Why not just post the actual comment text instead of links or screenshots? :confusion:Dark & Darker Discord #announcements posted:We will be releasing our evidence as we get them approved by our legal counsel. Here is our first batch.
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# ? Mar 29, 2023 22:52 |
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comedyblissoption posted:ip is wealthy people creating absurd enclosures around...ideas Rival in the sense of "is on the same scale as Nexon in Korea", with them working very closely with said rival (IM Hive?) having sets of incriminating emails and texts with Ironmace. I can't say this is Ironmace's wisest move legally, unless they just want to win in the court of public opinion, which will be a cold comfort if they lose. I especially couldn't have advised them admitting on reddit that one of their employees indeed was fired for keeping a secret personal server of P3 code and assets and only scrubbing after IA came looking asking if he had one (and his lawyer shouted GET loving RID OF IT at him).
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# ? Mar 30, 2023 00:09 |
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Double post, but some new information learned: So this isn't just sour grapes that Ironmace used the P3 idea after it was cancelled and they left. Instead, them leaving (and apparently wiping the data on the way out) is what killed P3 and caused it to be cancelled because the development head and half the dev team was fired or quit. Also, Nexon for all its faults has a very strong union in it that makes it almost impossible to fire people without very strong cause. Normally, they can only make you quit (and this is implied to be the reason why the team leader was quitting, because he was being fired without strong evidence of misconduct. It was being upgraded to 'fired' though when they learned he had taken data off of their servers, and then deleted it off of their servers, if I am understanding it correctly. So Nexon had always intended to develop it and release it, but Ironmace's actions made it impossible. EDIT: According to a Nexon employee, the Ironmace guy, Mr. A, was intentionally conflating a completely different project with P3. He had permission to use a private server with the other project, but Nexon soon implemented a work-home solution and never gave permission to use a private server for P3. LF was cancelled at preproduction for not looking good, and they were moved to P3, and Mr. A began secretly recruiting for his new company that he was going to take the P3 and LF data to in order to make it in revenge for L3 being cancelled. Nexon found out and fired him for it. Kchama fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Mar 31, 2023 |
# ? Mar 31, 2023 01:34 |
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Not totally implausible, but I find the notion that a private WFH server was a perfidious plot to secret recruit a shadow company to be a little ridiculous. Why wouldn't they just recruit without the Treason Server? The alternative narrative of 'Nexon's work from home solution didn't work for beans and everyone was just working around it anyway' seems more likely to me. TheDeadlyShoe fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Mar 31, 2023 |
# ? Mar 31, 2023 01:59 |
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Kchama posted:Double post, but some new information learned: So this isn't just sour grapes that Ironmace used the P3 idea after it was cancelled and they left. Instead, them leaving (and apparently wiping the data on the way out) is what killed P3 and caused it to be cancelled because the development head and half the dev team was fired or quit. What is your source for all this?
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 02:34 |
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:Not totally implausible, but I find the notion that a private WFH server was a perfidious plot to secret recruit a shadow company to be a little ridiculous. Why wouldn't they just recruit without the Treason Server? The WFH server had nothing to do with recruiting people. It was just what he was using despite being told not to and where he kept the files until he had to delete them when the IA team came to investigate reports when he was being fired. It was the impetus for him being fired eventually, as Nexon apparently wasn't clued in on the 'he was working to convince people to jump ship with him due to his pet project being cancelled' deal until after he told them that he planned on going to his own company and replicating P3 (him telling Nexon that was something he admitted to through Ironmace's reddit posts). Franks Happy Place posted:What is your source for all this? A Korean site called 'Blind' that people use to anonymously air stuff. Another employee on the LF/P3 team talked about what happened. Apparently a big thing that was going on was that Nexon planned to release P3 under a spinoff company whose entire thing was to release indie-level games like P3 with "buy to play" monetization, that is to say you would purchase it and then there was no further monetization or subscription. EDIT: Apparently one day he just dropped it on the rest of the team that he was going to leave Nexon and already sponsor lined up to form a company paying them money to invest in their new game, which is confirmed in emails leaked so the allegations have some evidence that they aren't made up there. This was immediately reported to Nexon, and according to the insider, this is when it was found that the private server was found and is why him 'quitting' turned to him being fired, and he tried to keep the server but it seems IA got at least a copy of it. Kchama fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Mar 31, 2023 |
# ? Mar 31, 2023 02:58 |
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You realize you are dropping like, huge news right now? You've got some inside info that no one is touching on. It's all a lot to wrap your around. It's an entirely different side of things that not a single person has touched on. I believe you, because why would you make up stuff like that, but that current sentiment is just "gently caress Nexon, Ironmace is right" and this news is not that.
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 03:12 |
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ShowTime posted:You realize you are dropping like, huge news right now? You've got some inside info that no one is touching on. It's all a lot to wrap your around. It's an entirely different side of things that not a single person has touched on. I believe you, because why would you make up stuff like that, but that current sentiment is just "gently caress Nexon, Ironmace is right" and this news is not that. I do. That's why I'm not doing anything else but trying to report what I've been finding, because I understand it's a lot to digest. Like, I found a video by Kira, which I will link below, that lays it out, and is about the same post I found. He's apparently found more stuff to back it up, which will help a lot since digging through Korean is tiring and finding a translated version was so wonderful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9twVyOIRQ4 Kchama fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Mar 31, 2023 |
# ? Mar 31, 2023 03:14 |
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i just want to dark
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 03:20 |
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I respect it. It's a ton of info to take in and an impartial kind of view compared to the "ironmace good, nexon bad" point of view. I think sane people just want facts. I'm just gonna watch all these videos and keep taking in what info comes out and form my own opinion. The other side is just people thirsting for Dark and Darker and ignoring what is actually happening in the background, and admittedly, what is legal and right. Ironmace done a good game. It's fun and we wanna play it. But if Ironmace basically hosed over someone else, regardless of who that person is, to make it, is that okay?
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 03:22 |
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comedyblissoption posted:i just want to dark i want to darker
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 03:24 |
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if employees from microsoft quit to make their own operating system or w/e, it shouldn't be considered wrong even if microsoft can stop them by getting the courts to agree with the wealthier party
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 03:46 |
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Well that depends on how they make it. Did they make the new OS using what they did at Microsoft, down to even working on it while at Microsoft? If Microsoft was making a new OS and people split off before it was completed, or even because it wouldn't be completed, should they now own that OS? That's a bit of the core argument here.
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 03:52 |
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the wealthy should not have such a powerful claim to what is in peoples' heads to prevent them from recreating software completely from scratch
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 03:56 |
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That's absolutely not what is happening, but is what the public is perceiving to be happening. It's gonna come down to a court room, but that blind view of "Ironmace is just making a game that we all thought about" is so far from what things are actually looking like. The public is thinking "Nexon had an idea for a game, didn't do it, so Ironmace did" and that's looking to be very far from the truth.
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 04:03 |
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nothing from Kchama suggests they didn't just recreate the code and assets from scratch, so that is what is happening. why should employees be obligated to keep working for a company they don't want to work for and are upset at? what is wrong about employees taking their labor elsewhere and working on similar software? this reeks of noncompete clause silliness
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 04:13 |
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ShowTime posted:That's absolutely not what is happening, but is what the public is perceiving to be happening. It's gonna come down to a court room, but that blind view of "Ironmace is just making a game that we all thought about" is so far from what things are actually looking like. The public is thinking "Nexon had an idea for a game, didn't do it, so Ironmace did" and that's looking to be very far from the truth. youre missing his point. the question is not the legality or ultimately what the court will decide, the issue is not that of the law, but that of justice and tyranny. seems silly in a video game thread but that is the thrust of his post. further, we should consider the utility argument, since we're mostly westerners here and western people jack off to pics of john stuart mill, thus: we want to play wizard war, something is preventing us from playing wizard war, the total joy derived from playing wizard war is greater than not. therefor we should play wizard war. btw i think mill is very stupid and may actually be fishmech. but then again id like to play wizard war. next slide please
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 04:14 |
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an employee was so upset that the project he was working on was cancelled by the company that he took revenge by banding together with other employees and formed their own competing company. how horrible. how vile.
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 04:16 |
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I've been so underappreciated in this thread that I've decided to make my own forum: somethingawesome.com. It's my god given right.
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 04:18 |
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also this idea that nexon was forced to cancel the project because people quit is just some abloobloo nonsense. if nexon wanted to keep working on the project, they'd just shuffle people around or hire people to work on it if they were convinced it was a great investment lol
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 04:22 |
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doesn't sound like they wanted to quit it, but abloobloo anyway
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 04:31 |
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Regardless of being serious or not, whoever is doing whatever character, doesn't seem like we'll get Dark and Darker for awhile. Shits gonna be held up in courts for a minute.
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 04:33 |
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theres probably a billion clones being worked on right now so maybe someone can recreate the magic i just wanted to point out even taking the snippets Kchama is posting at face value as what happened, it makes you roll your eyes. half the dev team quit so you had to cancel the project that you really genuinely wanted to work on? lol you still have half the dev team left and can backfill positions with the same budget. there's no severance they loving quit or were fired.
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 04:37 |
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I think a few people are playing Expedition to Agartha, which I respect in a way because it has its moments, can be fun, is free to play and the devs are chill, but I can't get into it the same way I can with Dark and Darker. If a version of that came out with spells, now we talking.
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 04:42 |
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comedyblissoption posted:theres probably a billion clones being worked on right now so maybe someone can recreate the magic nexon is just a scrappy little 2,000,000,000 USD (that's two billion, in US dollars) annual revenue outfit. they cannot possibly dip into shareholder value to pay 25 people 100k USD a year to work on P3, that would take 2,500,000 USD! ShowTime posted:I think a few people are playing Expedition to Agartha, which I respect in a way because it has its moments, can be fun, is free to play and the devs are chill, but I can't get into it the same way I can with Dark and Darker. If a version of that came out with spells, now we talking. it's got rough edges for sure, but the devs are improving the game with pretty frequent patches (eight patches since going f2p on 3/16, all which at least addressed some glaring issues and had some QoL improvements) hopefully the devs keep it up and hopefully their coming-soon skill system includes magic, not just passive % changes or something lame Tempora Mutantur fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Mar 31, 2023 |
# ? Mar 31, 2023 04:44 |
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The separate thing that stood out, but is kind of tied into this whole thing is: are Koreans really that defensive, almost patriotic, about their game companies? I saw here, and in Reddit a bit, comments about Koreans being upset with this or that because of the honor of it all. Is this kind of poo poo really that big of a deal to Koreans as some sides are making it seem? Honor and patriotism about a game company? Come on, they make video games.
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 04:49 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 22:00 |
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also the unfolding narrative kchama posted is internally inconsistent. it says that the project was wiped in a malicious way that was not recoverable so they could no longer work on the project, but then they said they received a copy of the treacherous private server. which is it? how was the server recovered? did an internal affairs agent herocially wrest a hammer away from the ironmace devil right before he was going to destroy the only copy they knew existed? or did ironmace just say yeah there was a server you permitted and knew about from the previous project you cancelled and here's the code from it for the current project cya.
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# ? Mar 31, 2023 04:57 |