"We respectfully implore Valve not to Dark And Darker Gold give in to Nexon’s threats and to instead respect the creative ingenuity of a young gaming studio that has put out a product that is already loved by hundreds of thousands of fans eager to see the next chapter in the Dark and Darker saga."

The issuing of a DMCA counter notice begins a process that could either see Dark and Darker return to Steam fairly soon, or possibly more likely, bring the courts into it.

"After receiving a counter notice, the service provider is obligated to forward that counter notice to the person who sent the original takedown notice," according to Copyright Alliance. "Once the service provider has received a valid DMCA counter notice they must wait 10-14 days. 

If the copyright owner sues the alleged infringer in that time frame the material will remain down, but if no suit is filed then the service provider must re-activate or allow access to the alleged infringing activity."

The latest Dark and Darkest playtest is now over, and while Ironmace earned kudos for making it happen despite the obstacles, the test itself did not go especially smoothly.

"The technical quality was not up to our standards, and we’ll work hard to improve it for the future," Ironmace said in a message posted on the Dark and Darker Discord server. "We were also the target of Dark And Darker Gold for sale endless DDoS attacks and we are sorry that it impacted you. We will investigate solutions to mitigate these issues in the future."