아이언메이스 "다크 앤 다커 스팀 제거 부당하다"
다크 앤 다커 개발사 아이언메이스가 넥슨과의 저작권 침해 법정 다툼 원인을 직원 개인 문제라고 공식 발표했다. 스팀에서 다크 앤 다커 서비스가 중단된 건 부당하다고도 설명했다. 유저들 사이에서는 꼬리 자르기라는 반응이 지배적이다.
아이언메이스는 27일 오전 1시 40분 공식 디스코드로 입장문을 발표했다. 해당 입장문은 영문으로 작성됐다. 한국어 답변은 현재 준비 중이다.
아이언메이스는 "넥슨은 다크 앤 다커는 넥슨 영업비밀과 저작권을 침해하면서까지 도용한 정보를 사용하여 제작 및 개발된 게임이라고 주장했다. 이는 근거 없는 주장이다. 넥슨은 다크 앤 다커 공개 6개월 후 등록된 프로젝트P3 저작권을 증거로 내밀었다. 정황 증거로만 몰고가고 있다. 넥슨 저작권 자료와 영업비밀을 도용하지 않았다"고 입장문을 시작했다.
아이언메이스 설명에 따르면 넥슨에서 해고되고 고소된 아이언멘이스 직원(이하 피고소인)은 프로젝트P3 개발 당시 개인 서버에 관련 자료를 저장했다. 이를 본 그의 상사는 자료가 저장된 개인 서버 운용을 자제하라고 지시했다. 피고소인도 해당 지시에 동의했다.
코로나19 팬데믹 당시 사무실 폐쇄와 개발 편의성 증진을 빌미로 계속해서 모든 작업 내용을 개인 서버로 이행했다. 피고소인은 당시 넥슨 보안팀에서 별도 경고를 내리지 않아 암묵적으로 동의했다고 판단했다.
이후 피고소인은 회사 분위기 문제로 퇴사를 결심했다. 이때 다른 프로젝트P3 개발자들에게 동반 퇴사를 제안했다. 넥슨은 그의 퇴사 계획을 인지해 내부 감사팀을 보내 절도 혐의로 그를 고소했다.
결국 피고소인은 징계 해고당했다. 프로젝트P3 개발자 9명은 자발적으로 퇴사했다. 즉 아이언메이스 주요 구성원 10여 명은 프로젝트P3 개발 출신이다. 피고소인은 해고 1개월 후 넥슨에게 고소당했다. 이후 아이언메이스는 수 차례 압수수색을 당했다.
이후 넥슨은 아이언메이스가 다크 앤 다크 개발에 자사 지적재산권을 침해하고 디지털 밀레니엄 저작권법을 위반했다고 스팀 운영사 밸브에 알렸다. 동시에 다크 앤 다커를 스팀 플랫폼에서 제거할 것을 요청했다. 이에 따라 다크 앤 다커는 지난 25일 스팀 플랫폼에서 사라졌다.
아이언메이스는 "단기간 동안 다크 앤 다커를 처음부터 새로 개발할 수 있었던 자료와 증거를 가지고 있다. 다크 앤 다커 개발 당시 언리얼 엔진 스토어에서 플러그인과 애셋을 다수 사용했다. 개발 초기부터 버전 관리를 했기 때문에 날짜별 코드와 내부 플레이 테스트도 존재한다. 넥슨은 다크 앤 다커에서 프로젝트P3와 동일한 파일 이름 리소스를 2388개 이상 발견했다고 주장했지만 대부분 동일 스토어에서 구매한 파일이다"고 해명했다.
아이언메이스 주장에 따르면 다크 앤 다커는 프로젝트P3와 장르적 유사성, 클리셰적인 요소에서 흡사할 뿐 넥슨 영업비밀을 활용해서 개발한 게임이 아니다. 여타 수많은 동일 장르 게임에서도 발견되는 유사성과 같은 맥락이라는 의미다.
이를 확인하기 위해 아이언메이스는 Chat GPT에 일반적인 PVP 던전 크롤링 게임에 대한 설명을 요청한 내역도 공개했다. Chat GPT는 "해당 게임 궁극적 목표는 던전의 가장 깊은 레벨에 도달해 최종 보스를 물리치는 동시에 다른 플레이어를 능가하는 것이다. 해당 게임은 PvE와 PvP 게임 플레이를 모두 즐기는 플레이어들에게 흥미롭고 경쟁적인 경험을 제공한다"는 원론적인 설명으로 답했다.
아이언메이스는 "디지털 밀레니엄 저작권법에 따른 스팀 플랫폼 제거는 근거 없는 조치다. 수사기관을 통해 다크 앤 다커 소스와 애셋을 프로젝트P3와 비교하면서 해명할 수 있다. 빠른 시일 내에 이 문제가 정상 해결되길 원한다"고 마무리했다.
해명문을 확인한 대중들은 "적발되지 않으면 도둑질이 아니냐", "계속 해명한다면서 불리한 사실을 밝히는지 모르겠다", "핵심이 산업 스파이 짓인데 왜 표절로 논점을 흐리냐", "해명문이 얼마나 멍청하면 GPT-4도 문제점을 줄줄이 지적하네", "역대 최악의 해명문", "이걸 옹호하는 사람들은 제 정신이냐" 등 싸늘한 반응을 쏟아내고 있다.
■ 아이언메이스 공식 입장 전문
- Since this issue is newsworthy in Korea we will be preparing the response in Korean.
- Response from our concept artist about the copyrighted character design.
- Source list for the assets purchased from the Unreal Marketplace.
- Videos showing key milestone builds from our first playtest builds until the more recent playtests.
- Git logs and file lists for the first year of development.
We are IRONMACE Co., Ltd. ("Ironmace"), a South Korean independent video game developer known for developing the PC game Dark and Darker. This letter is intended to address the serious allegations of Copyright Infringement and Misappropriation of Trade Secrets that have been levied against us in the recent DMCA "Takedown Notice" from NEXON Korea Corporation ("Nexon").
Nexon states that according to their investigation, "*Dark and Darker* appears to have been built and developed using trades secrets and copyrighted information, copied and stolen from Nexon." We would like to show that these allegations are baseless. No copyrighted materials or misappropriated trade secrets from Nexon were used by IRONMACE.
In the takedown notice, Nexon lists their registered copyrights pertaining to the *P3 Project* which were registered just last month, more than 6 months after *Dark and Darker* was revealed to the public, as the subject of the alleged infringement.
The first point of contention appears, where they accuse one of our members of acquiring and transferring key assets to his personal server "without authorization", resulting in an unlawful transfer. Here is our response to this claim:
Due to a mandatory remote work policy implemented by Nexon in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the accused member received multiple written authorizations from executive members at Nexon from 2020 to 2021, allowing him to utilize an external personal server to improve the performance of his team (e.g., version control, build machine, and dedicated server). After utilizing the personal servers for almost a year, the accused member asked the leadership if it was ok to continue using his personal servers. The leaders told him to refrain from using the personal servers. The accused member agreed to takedown the servers as long as he could maintain the performance of his team by having his programming team come to the office bypassing the companywide remote work policy.
The accused member initiated the takedown of the personal servers but, due to the uncertainty of sporadic Covid waves, taking down the server in a quick and exhaustive manner was not a high priority. As a result, some automated scripts related to the build machine were left running on his personal server at this time. 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. Since all company machines were monitored using a companywide endpoint solution, the existence and usage of his personal servers, ones that were subject of approvals and re-approvals, must be reasonably known to Nexon over this multi-month period of development. Not a single warning was received from that security team so it was easy to construe it as acknowledgement that his actions were acceptable, otherwise it would mean that Nexon would be failing at taking reasonable measures to maintain the confidentiality of their assets.
The accused member decided to leave Nexon in June 2021 due to a breakdown of trust with one of his superiors and due to the uncertain atmosphere at the company. His prior project was unceremoniously canceled after a well-received milestone presentation in 2020 and numerous other projects around him were also cancelled during this time.
Having worked closely with his development team, he informed them about his plans to leave Nexon. He made it clear that the reason for leaving was due to the uncertain atmosphere fostered at the company. He also stated that he'd welcome the team's talents for his next endeavor. He made it clear that he'd likely pursue a project in the same genre as P3 Project, but explicitly clarified that any development would be made completely from scratch. This fact has been noted, in witness testimony collected by the police, investigating a separate personal lawsuit filed against the accused member, by Nexon.
Shortly after Nexon's leadership became aware of the accused member's plans to leave the company, instead of trying to resolve it a professional manner, they abruptly sent the Internal Audit team and accused him of stealing files, despite having observed his personal server being used without notice for several month. Due to harassment and the lack of respect from the company and after consulting with his lawyers, he concluded that his private information on his private servers was not subject to any record so he deleted his information to ensure his privacy.
He was fired based on these unproven claims and subsequently sued by the company a month later, with liens placed on his home and other assets. His personal lawsuit is still ongoing, and the claims of stealing or misappropriating these files have not been substantiated. He has been fully cooperative with the investigation from the police and has been the target of multiple search warrants. Ironmace has also been the subject of multiple search warrants during this investigation and has been as accommodating as possible to speed up this process and prove no wrongdoing. The fact that nine of the twenty-plus P3 Project team members voluntarily left Nexon, out of their own free will to join Ironmace - despite the inherent risks of joining a startup - shows the trust that the accused member instills in his peers.
As a secondary contention, the takedown notice submitted by Nexon then alleges that the founder of Ironmace, Terence Park, knew that the accused member used stolen trade secrets and copyrighted material to develop *Dark and Darker* to knowingly benefit oneself and Ironmace, basing this claim purely on past association and without offering any proof. Here is our response to this claim:
The founder of the company has no knowledge that any stolen trade secrets or copyrighted material were ever used to develop *Dark and Darker.* In fact, the founder has on multiple occasions told members of his team that they must be extra diligent in ensuring that everything is done by the books in order to uphold the vision and branding of the company.
The takedown notice then states that Nexon's P3 Game has never been disclosed to a third party during this period in an attempt to strengthen their claims that the only way to come up with a similar idea was to have stolen it. However, this claim can be clearly proven false. Nexon disclosed P3 in a media showcase in August 2021 to members of the gaming media who then wrote about it in multiple blogs and articles as shown below:
The takedown notice then states that no other games had the same "concept, genre, and plot" as the P3 Game even though none of the contents of these categories are original and other games like *Expedition Agartha* have all three that are similar.
The notice then states that within a mere ten months of forming Ironmace, its demo/test version of *Dark and Darker* became publicly available in August 2022. The notice states that "it is impossible for Ironmace to have developed *Dark and Darker* in such a short timeframe without using Nexon's trade secrets and confidential information", again without offering any proof. Here is our response to this claim:
Just because it may be difficult for a large bureaucratic company such as Nexon, to develop games in such a short time frame does not mean it is impossible for another studio big, small, new or old, to develop games quickly.
Firstly, Ironmace started with a larger team at the beginning of development. Secondly, the starting team composition was better set for quick development with a heavy focus on programming. Thirdly, the *P3 Project* team did not have a server programmer while Ironmace made sure to have one from the very start due to the importance of building a stable server architecture.
Fortunately, we have evidence we will be releasing soon that shows exactly how we built our game so quickly and efficiently. Firstly, we rely on utilizing as many store-bought assets as possible for use as 3D game objects, as that comprises the bulk of the cost and time in game development. We will soon release a list of the store-bought assets that were used in the development of *Dark and Darker* to show how almost all 3D assets were purchased from the Unreal Marketplace. We also have numerous videos providing evidence of key milestone builds from our early internal playtests up until our most recent tests showing our progress and how we built the game from the ground up that we will soon start to post online. For the more technically minded, we will also soon share the logs and file lists from our git version control repository from the very first push up until when we added our in-house anti-cheat implementation (about a years' worth of development logs) so other developers can easily see the progression of our game and how unlikely it is to sneak in stolen code and assets. Since key members of Ironmace were also on the development team of the *P3 Project* and know how quickly and haphazardly the *P3 Project* was built, if anything, using assets, design, and code built for that project would have been a hinderance rather than a benefit to the development of *Dark and Darker*.
The notice then states that Nexon conducted a comparative analysis of *Dark and Darker* and the P3 Game. They state that they found over 2,338 resources with identical file names between the two games proving that "the number of identical file names is too substantial for mere coincidence." Here is our response to this claim:
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. We have provided a list of sources for all the "identical" resources listed by Nexon.
The notice then states the similarities in the character design and other setting and structural designs of the two games. Our response is that both games rely on very traditional classic fantasy tropes, none of which are original and can be found in numerous other fantasy games, including the listed character classes and the torch mechanics. Both games being in the same genre of a classic fantasy dungeon crawler can explain these similarities.
The notice then states that "Even if, as Ironmace has argued in media statements, the graphic assets (including character designs) were purchased from the "Unreal Marketplace," it does not explain the numerous specific aspects of the character in *Dark and Darker* characters that are different from that of the graphic assets available for purchase on Unreal Marketplace, but are identical to the aspects of the character found in the *P3 Game*." Here is our response to this claim:
For clarity, much of the 3D graphic assets were purchased from the "Unreal Marketplace," but many 2D graphic elements including character concept art and UI were created in-house. The character concept artworks are based on very traditional fantasy subject matter and tropes which explains their similarities. Furthermore, the character concept artwork for both games were created by the same individual explaining the similarities in style. We will soon link a separate document from our concept artist explaining the core differences in the artwork and why our artwork is not an infringement of the characters in *P3 game*. The document will display other concept artwork found through a google image search for the same subject matter showing the similarities due to the common fantasy tropes.
The notice then states that the level and extent of the two games' key concepts, genre, and storyline "make it clear that Ironmace must have used Nexon's trade secrets to create *Dark and Darker*." Again, both the concepts and storyline are purposely traditional and generic and can be found in many fantasy games including pen and paper RPGs, which was one of the main inspirations for *Dark and Darker*. The premise of adventurers delving into dungeons full of monsters and treasures in their quest to seek riches, is so generic and common that it can be broadly be applied to numerous other fantasy games. Just for fun we asked ChatGPT to come up with a description for a generic PvP Dungeon Crawling game that created an eerily similar game description below:
Finally, the shared characteristics of the two games that the notice points out in exhibit E are again easily explained by conventions found commonly in the shared game genres and are found in many other similar games.
Given the information presented, it is difficult to believe that Nexon, in good faith, could reasonably believe that Ironmace has infringed on the copyrights for their *P3 project*. They also provide no actual evidence that Ironmace misappropriated Nexon's trade secret information in the creation of *Dark and Darker*, but instead base it on circumstantial claims. Finally, they accuse Ironmace of a flagrant breach of Valve's SSA and SOCR, restricting our ability to provide our game to players on the largest mainstream PC game platform and severely obstructing our ability to do business. Ironmace requests that Nexon renounce their baseless claims. If they would like to compete on merit, we welcome Nexon to promptly accommodate the comparison of source code, custom assets, and design documents with the police to quickly and decisively put an end to this matter.
moon@gametoc.co.kr
Copyright © 게임톡. 무단전재 및 재배포 금지.