Hi there, We removed Dark and Darker from sale on the Epic Games Store on March 5 in consideration of a court decision in Korea between Nexon and the game’s publisher, IRONMACE. On November 1, 2025, we will be removing Dark and Darker from your library, at which point it will no longer be playable via the Epic Games Store.
Effective immediately, players can no longer purchase Redstone Shards or the Legendary Status upgrades via the Epic Games Store. Players can continue to use the Redstone Shards that they have previously purchased until November 1, 2025.
We will issue a refund to all players who have purchased the Legendary Status upgrade. Refunds will be issued to the player’s original payment method, and where that’s not possible, players will receive a refund to their Epic account balance. We are unable to provide refunds on Redstone Shards.
If you have not received a refund by July 1, please contact player support.
Thank you,
The Epic Games Store team
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Reminder that you do not own digital games
That is not universally true. On GOG for example you can download all your games, so things like this could not happen there. Sure, you still technically purchase a license and do not actually buy the games, but for all intents and purposes this is still the closest you get to actually owning the games.
They don’t have DRM. That’s not the same as owning the game. If you don’t back up the games or installers yourself, and GOG goes under, you lose access to your library the same as Epic or Steam going away.
You can back up your Steam and Epic games, too. You just need to be able to access your account to verify your license for most titles (but not everything; loads of games do not use Steam or Epic’s DRM, have no online checks to verify anything, and you can just copy the installation folder to another machine to play the game). But you can also easily crack both of their DRM to skip the online checks even if they do use it.
This goes for physical media as well. You own the disk; you do not own the software on said disk. The software on the physical media could still have an online check to see if you are a license holder (this is what CD-Keys are used for) and block you from installing/running the software, despite it being on your own CD/DVD. I am pretty sure I myself have games on disk that can not be installed because the online verification servers no longer exist, so the only way to install them is with cracks.
They don’t have DRM. That’s not the same as owning the game.
That’s why I mentioned that you purchase a license. That has also always been true even if you “bought” a game as a physical copy in a store. A DRM-free game is still the closest thing you get to owning a game.
If you don’t back up the games or installers yourself, and GOG goes under, you lose access to your library the same as Epic or Steam going away.
I have heard this argument before, but I really don’t get it. Of course you could lose your files if you don’t download them. I’d say that’s so obvious it isn’t even worth mentioning. If you lose or destroy your physical copy of a game you also lose access to it. Pretty obvious.
Why could you both not be right ? Yes, right now a DRM Free game is the closest thing that we get to owning a game. Yet, that wasn’t always true, we used to have an unlimited access to our video game, executable, as long as we had a disk.
But they took that from us ! 👿
But that’s the point they’re making, isn’t it? With GOG games you can download the installer. With that you also get unlimited access to it.
Given you don’t lose it, but that same argument goes for physical disks.
Exactly, GOG has no control on how you use it, for all intents and purposes it’s yours. You can even borrow the game to your friends if you want. I love GOG, hope they nvr go under
So you’re saying torrenting and seeding is basically a moral obligation?
It’s just basic preservation of art. 😤
Depending on the era of the game, you might well own a copy of a game on a disk, just like you own a copy of a book when you buy a book. Weaselling out of first-sale-doctrine stuff came a long time after people started buying video games. A century ago, publishers were trying exactly the same thing with books, and depending on the country, either legislation was introduced that made it explicitly illegal, or the courts determined that putting a licence agreement in a book just meant that the customer got a copy of a licence agreement with their book, not that they were bound by its terms.
I was born in '85. IBM pioneered the idea of software licensing in the '50s. Nothing I’ve ever purchased was old enough to be free from the concept.
The thing I hate most is not being able to re-sell something. I mean, sure, I could sell my disks to someone; but they wouldn’t necessarily be able to use them and then I would be guilty of fraud or copyright violation or both. 😩
You own your individual copy of the game software, end of. It doesn’t fucking matter if it’s on a disc or a digital download.
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It’s not ever true. It is always a lie pushed by copyright-maximalist shysters who hope the public is too cowed to call them on their bullshit.
Sure you get a DRM-free license on GOG, but for many games you are still dependent on online servers for authentication, which can be shut down at any time rendering your access null and void. The only recourse is technically “hacking” a game a creating local servers which is both against terms of service and against the law in some countries.
online servers for authentication
I am not aware of any game on GOG that requires an online server for authentication. I’m not saying no such thing exists - I don’t own every single game on GOG, but that would go against the whole DRM free thing. Care to name a few games that do this? I don’t mean games that have an online mode that require a server, but games that just require authentication against an online server to be able to play the game.
You are talking about always-on DRM, I was talking about dependence on the servers for connecting to the multiplayer. Most of GOG games lose partial funtionality when servers get shut down as GOG doesn’t use/host their own servers.
You specifically said “online servers for authentication”. That’s what I understood as just that - a server required to be able to play the game, not a server required to use an actual online feature of a game. Don’t get me wrong, I very much prefer when games allow multiplayer games without requiring a server run by the publisher. All that is very different from what the posts title is about, though.
By the way, there are still games on GOG that let you run local servers for multi player gaming.
You specifically said “online servers for authentication”.
And then continued in the next sentence. In context it makes sense, without it I can understand your confusion.
And I’m not trying to attack GOG, just highlighting the reality of online “onwership” in general. GOG and Itch.io are the best we can get without real regulations.
There are some great open source games (like !bar@discuss.tchncs.de), but it’s still very rare.
When steam takes games off the store they let you still download them. Epic just sucks.
They are doing refunds resulting in issues from a lawsuit.
How is this epic bad?
It was pulled from Steam years ago due to another lawsuit
https://www.gamesradar.com/dark-and-darker-has-been-pulled-from-steam/
Yes, but steam didn’t remove it from your library
They have before… 12 years ago was first occurrence
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1pzpny/steam_has_now_officially_removed_their_first_game/
My opinion is once I’ve paid for a game, piracy is on the table for that game if anything happens that prevents me from playing the copy I purchased.
Not just your opinion, it’s the law in some places.
Which places?
Every place that actually gives a shit about property rights.
Such as?
Oh, those don’t exist anymore
Oh, those don’t exist anymore
UK law allows for making and duplication of digital copies of a product you own that version of, provided you don’t share them with others.
At least it did 15 years ago, not 100% certain today off the top of my head.
This is a multiplayer freemium game though, I don’t think there are any cracked servers for it, and supposedly there are options for Epic users to retain their accounts with things they’ve bought (the game is also apparently kind of p2w).
It’s a multiplayer freemium game. Even if they let you keep your “copy” of it, servers will be down and the game will not be playable anyways. At least they offer a refund.
Multiplayer online games used to allow you to self-host so there was no obligatory centralised server. The game need not be deleted, that was purely a business decision.
I remember when you could be a listen server or run your own dedicated server using the freely available executable. Been a while since I’ve seen anything like that
Lots of game still have that, Satisfactory, Minecraft, Valheim
The suits found out what servers are. Worst shit that ever happened
Two crimes, then.
I’ll give them props that they are going to refund owners for the bit they can, I would have expected most stores so to go “oh well! we have been ordered to remove it, sucks to be you.”
Steam has proven to be a far, far, far more capable and stable repository for my games that I could be … since May 2006. I got Steam because that’s how you bought Half Life 2.
Ya know what? I can still play Half Life 2. I’ve never had the slightest problem accessing any Steam game other than Ubisoft crap, and now I don’t buy Ubi.
Add it up, man. That’s 19 years of gaming. 151 games. And I have access to every bit of it, at my whim.
For some basic comparison, I have a couple digital pictures that old. A handful. And its shocking that I managed to keep track of them that long. An accident, really.
Steam does the job of safeguarding my games much better than I can.Hate to think what will happen when Gaben retires.
Piracy, in a word
Sure, that is the alternative, but nothing will beat the wide range of functionality that steam and valve provide. The death of this platform would be catastrophic.
Agreed. If Steam goes under (not really likely), there’s still GOG & itchio.
This isn’t exclusive to epic. Steam has had games removed as well.
19 years. And the only bad part was Ubi. That’s it.
Honestly, with a record like that, why would I care that Steam has had games removed?
And, it occurs to me, in 19 years, how could they not have had games removed?Then why the outrage from this news story then?
I also boycott epic. Steam is the way. But for reasons that steam is different to epic.
I like Steam enough that I haven’t bothered with any other platform.
I do hear good things about those other platforms, (maybe they are cheaper, and maybe they support old games better?) But all my games are in one spot on steam, and its simpler for me to keep it that way.It does seem that there are people really outraged by the news story. I don’t entirely understand, other than people like to get upset about things. Being outraged is engaging and takes your mind off of whatever else is bothering you.
I can only think of the Digital Homicide library having been removed, but if you already purchased those, you have them. Those games were absolute shovelware with no artistic or entertainment value though.
I’m more pissed about the Unreal franchise being pulled, which was entirely on Epic. Fuck Tim Sweeney.
I mean to be fair, as the court determined, the people making this game stole parts of the game to sell to you in the first place, so this was piracy with more steps. I feel like the correct action would have been for the store to stop selling the game, the people that made money be forced to give that money to the people that were harmed by the steeling of the content. I guess it’s a bad look on Epic for them too to keep money made from this and maybe they are just trying to avoid being drawn into this ordeal by doing it this way. Legal systems in other countries can be a bit more precarious than what we expect.
But yeah, it’s a dark precedent. Remove them from my library so I can’t redownload them from Epic? Never see updates? Maybe even not ever launch through Epic’s app? Sure. I get that.
I really wish these stores had better simple language right in the “buy now” buttons. (Like, for example, “Rent now!”)
I guess Nexon wasn’t happy with $6 million because the court found Dark & Darker wasn’t copyright infringement, but was an infringement of ‘trade secrets’.
If I remember 2023 correctly, Nexon decided to cut the game at the end of development and dumpster their work. So the devs left and finished the game on their own. Since Nexon never actually made/finished/released the game they couldn’t claim copyright.
I do, because I have loads of them on disc and carts still.
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Sure do. They’re on my disk and without DRM or removed DRM.
You own things you buy.
This is theft.
Anyone rolling their eyes and performing apologism can fuck off.
