"Our code was built from scratch," Seung-ha wrote. "Most of our assets are purchased from the Unreal marketplace. All other assets and all game designs docs were created inhouse. This has already been audited by Dark And Darker Gold an outside agency. As far as we know you cannot copyright a game genre."

Seung-ha also addressed a lawsuit referenced in a separate This is Game report (Google translated), saying that it is a "separate personal matter" filed against a single Ironmace employee. "No lawsuit has been filed against Ironmace," he wrote.

Korean news site YTN (Google translated) says Nexon did file a complaint against Dark and Darker relating to the "Unfair Competition ; Trade Secrets Protection Act," however, alleging that CEO Park Mo and other employees stole information about a game they were working on while at Nexon. 

Game industry commentator PlayerIGN said that case was initially filed in August 2022, but that Nexon has requested a "deeper investigation" as Dark and Darker has continued testing and growing in popularity. It's not clear whether that's the same action noted by Seung-ha.

Seung-ha said he believes the rumors of Dark And Darker Gold for sale stolen code and assets were raised by "a disgruntled third party," although he provided no details as to who that might be or why they're trying to stir up trouble. For now, Ironmace is attempting to handle the matter "privately,"