If they just said that the stolen assets were "made by AI" then they'd instantly get a legion of defenders.

This is weird. It's still up on Steam.

Does this mean it's going to be removed on steam as well? It doesn't really matter because the developers IRONMACE really fucked the game recently and people hated the changes they did.

Nexon has good lawyers I bet which is why this is happening. I don't remember the timing of this but sounds like Epic was being greedy whilst Steam was hedging their bets. Now it's coming home to roost.

Regardless of lawsuits or whatever, when someone buys something, it should be theirs forever.

I'm not seeing any evidence that this procedure has been mandated by the court... It's still been business as usual for this early access game on Steam, with continued availability of purchases and the developer pushing updates almost weekly throughout this year. I'm also seeing an announcement back in March about migrating player accounts away from the Epic store version following the delisting. Maybe Epic has something in their publishing contract about termination if your game is successfully sued, but as far as I can tell this is a unilateral move on their part.

I am guessing this is not "Epic" in the same way that articles will say "Steam is giving away games". Developers have this ability. If they were ordered by a court to remove the game then that explains it. Steam would do the same with a court order.

This is a rare case, but it's not unheard of. Honestly I am not familiar with Dark and Darker so I am not aware if it is online only/live service. If it is, leaving it in your library or taking it out won't make a lick of difference because if the server isn't running, you ain't playing. If this infuriates you, then so should what Ubisoft did with "The Crew".

Sepharo wrote on Jun 17, 2025, 13:40:

Beamer wrote on Jun 17, 2025, 13:00:
Steam has removed games from people's libraries before. They'll do it again. Perhaps not this one, but people do often seem to ignore that Steam games have disappeared from libraries for a number of reasons.

I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but personally I don't remember that ever happening before...
I thought Steam will delist them but they stay in your library forever.

It's very rare, but has happened.
The majority were "games," not games. As in, they basically existed to drive you to advertising.
Some, like Order of War: Challenge were online only, shut down, and the dev requested the removal from Steam.
Some violated Steam rules and were booted from the platform, refund given.
Some "evolved," like how Episodes from Liberty City just became GTA4: Complete

Beamer wrote on Jun 17, 2025, 13:00:
Steam has removed games from people's libraries before. They'll do it again. Perhaps not this one, but people do often seem to ignore that Steam games have disappeared from libraries for a number of reasons.

I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but personally I don't remember that ever happening before...
I thought Steam will delist them but they stay in your library forever.

jacobvandy wrote on Jun 17, 2025, 12:56:
I don't really care that much about this game in particular, but it's pretty shitty that Epic is going beyond halting sales and plucking the license away from everyone. Even if the online services are going down and it will no longer be playable, what's the harm in leaving it in our libraries? Could they be wanting to save whatever minuscule amount of server bandwidth they might "waste" on it later? Plenty of defunct online games have come back with offline mods or community servers... Better to have it on Steam, then, which has not made any such announcement nor even removed it from their store. You could go claim it there right now, if you were so inclined.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2016590/Dark_and_Darker/

Lawsuits have a habit of doing that.
Steam has removed games from people's libraries before. They'll do it again. Perhaps not this one, but people do often seem to ignore that Steam games have disappeared from libraries for a number of reasons.

I don't really care that much about this game in particular, but it's pretty shitty that Epic is going beyond halting sales and plucking the license away from everyone. Even if the online services are going down and it will no longer be playable, what's the harm in leaving it in our libraries? Could they be wanting to save whatever minuscule amount of server bandwidth they might "waste" on it later? Plenty of defunct online games have come back with offline mods or community servers... Better to have it on Steam, then, which has not made any such announcement nor even removed it from their store. You could go claim it there right now, if you were so inclined.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2016590/Dark_and_Darker/