As for why Ironmace is publicizing its materials

[Betthauser]

Curiously, Ironmace includes a conversation log with ChatGPT where the company attempts to Dark And Darker Gold secure a definition of a "PvP dungeon crawl game." While a strange gesture, it seems to be an attempt to undermine Nexon's claim that P3 and Dark and Darker share identical premises. Whether that is true or not, videogame genres are not protected by copyright, and many examples of "Antz vs. Bug's Life" games exist across multiple genres and platforms (Chivalry vs. Mordhau, CoD vs. Battlefield, hell, even Mario vs. Sonic to name a few.)

Nexon has significant financial and legal weight to bring to bear against Ironmace, but it may not have an airtight case against the developer. Circumstantially, one can certainly see an outline of disgruntled developers convincing a team to leave Nexon and make their dream game on their own, but absent specific uses of copyrighted art or code for Nexon to point to, the smaller developer may be able to squeak it out of this conundrum.

As for why Ironmace is publicizing its materials, my best guess is that it is attempting to reassure fans and potential investors of Dark and Darker's future, or else to tip its hand to buying Dark And Darker Gold Nexon in the hopes that the publisher may withdraw its claims. I find it hard to ignore the parallels with the saga of Disco Elysium, its developer ZA/UM, and its founding artists feuding with its moneymen, a battle that is similarly getting slugged out in public through duelling lawsuits and public statements.

Dark and Darker is still kicked off Steam, so Ironmace is 'going old school' with BitTorrent for the latest playtest and fans are loving it

Back in February, Ironmace promised that there'd be one more Dark and Darker playtest before the game went into early access release. The situation became unexpectedly complicated shortly after that, though: A legal beef with Nexon flared up, and Dark and Darker was deslited from Steam.