Dark and Darker developer Ironmace is telling players to just torrent the new, fifth alpha playtest for its first-person dungeon crawler. The reason why is that Dark and Darker was removed from Steam last month amid legal trouble with Nexon, which claims that Ironmace stole not just game assets but even development staff from Nexon to create this game. Ironmace and Nexon are both based in South Korea, and Ironmace has completely rejected Nexon’s accusations. Nonetheless, the legal drama is ongoing, and the show must go on.
Ironmace Explains How to Torrent Dark and Darker for Its Playtest
On Discord, Ironmace has provided instructions for how to torrent its game playtest, in addition to straight-up tweeting the torrent link. There is nothing ambiguous about this situation at all. It wants people to play the game, but it has not been able to get the game reinstated on Steam yet. This is the developers’ interim solution. Unfortunately, due to state regulations, the playtest is not actually available to Korea, but it should be available internationally.
For those who dont know what this is : pic.twitter.com/adkHRjeRwF
— TwentyHxte (@TwentyHxte) April 14, 2023
Naturally, the developer cautions that everyone only use the link officially provided, because it doesn’t want anyone to get scammed into downloading a virus. And as a matter of policy, The Escapist does not condone the downloading of torrents either. But if you really, really loved this game in previous tests, (It garnered more than 100,000 concurrent players during a playtest this past February, so it’s doing something right.) then it’s up to you if you want to extremely carefully follow Ironmace’s explicit instructions about how to torrent and play the fifth Dark and Darker alpha playtest.
Hopefully, the legal situation between Ironmace and Nexon will resolve itself in a tidy manner soon so that the game can return to Steam. The alternative is that Nexon, a major player in Korean video games, turns this into a prolonged bloodbath, which would be bad for everyone.
