While ‘Dark & Darker’ was left out of the dungeon crawler genre on Steam, a major gaming platform, China’s Tencent appears to be taking over the market. In Korea, Hive IM is targeting the dungeon crawler market with the recently signed ‘Dungeon Stalkers’.
At the Steam Next Fest, which is taking place on the 8th, Mithril Interactive’s ‘DUNGEONBORNE’ is performing the best in the ‘Emerging games to be released’ and ‘Number of daily active trial players’ categories. Steam Next Fest is an event where you can see upcoming works first.
‘Dungeon Born’ is a first-person PvPvE dungeon crawler game based on the PC platform. You must form a party of one person or up to three people and explore the vast dungeon, defeat monsters and other adventurers, obtain ancient treasure, and escape from the depths of the dungeon. It features a dark and gloomy dungeon design with a medieval fantasy concept and exciting battles using various weapons and magic.
The first game to hit the dungeon crawler genre was Iron Mace’s ‘Dark & Darker’. A problem arose when Nexon raised suspicions of unauthorized export of internal projects to Iron Mace. In March of last year, Nexon requested Valve, which operates Steam, to delete ‘Dark & Darker’ for violating the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and it was accepted.
Currently, the preliminary injunction applications for the Nexon and Iron Mace lawsuits have both been dismissed in Korea, and they are in the stage of preparing for the lawsuit on the merits. Valve is known to be considering resuming ‘Dark & Darker’ after watching the outcome of the lawsuit.
‘Dungeon Bone’, which showed good results this time, is a game serviced by Tencent. In the Terms of Use, you can see Tencent’s overseas service subsidiary ‘Proxima Beta’ and its related brand ‘Level Infinite’. In addition, Tencent applied for the ‘Dungeon Bone’ trademark.
In the past, in the early days of the ‘Dark and Darker’ issue, there was speculation that Tencent was behind Iron Mace. There was also a view that Tencent would initiate mediation because of its good relationship with Nexon. However, since Tencent directly introduced the dungeon crawler genre ‘Dungeon Bone’, it is interpreted that there is no connection with Iron Mace.
In Korea, Hive IM (CEO Jung Woo-yong) has begun targeting the dungeon crawler market. On the 7th, Hive IM announced that it had signed a publishing contract for the global service of Action Square’s new dungeon crawler genre game ‘Dungeon Stalkers’ and at the same time made an investment in Action Square. ‘Dungeon Stalkers’ is a dungeon crawler genre game being developed by Action Square’s Studio HG.
‘Dungeon Stalkers’ received favorable reviews with more than 30,000 players participating through its own ‘Steam Play Test’ held in December last year. Hive IM plans to inject new vitality into the dungeon crawler genre through publishing ‘Dungeon Stalkers’ and elicit positive responses from the global market, while also establishing itself as a major player leading the dungeon crawler genre.