Dark and Darker is back on Steam, but some players feel misled.
Dark and Darker has returned to Steam after a year away from the platform due to a legal battle, and now it is marketing itself as a free to play game. However, players have been disappointed to discover that this free to play option is more of a demo, with almost all of the game being locked behind a $30 paywall, and have let their feelings be known in the Steam reviews.
At one point Dark and Darker was the hottest game on Steam when it was in demo form and looked set to be the next extraction looter hit, however being pulled from Steam for a year and only being available directly from the developers killed its momentum. Now it has returned to the platform, and also launched on the Epic Games Store, with all of the marketing presenting it as a free to play game, which has got players excited to try it.
However, once you boot up the free to play version of Dark and Darker it quickly becomes apparent that you’d only ever want to play this free option for an hour or two before giving up. The biggest issue isn’t the restricted content, with harder levels and some classes being locked, but the fact that you can’t take any rare items into a run with you. This means you can only ever use the most basic gear, and with a large portion of the game being about finding better loot to make your character stronger, it makes it largely pointless to play. What makes things worse is that this gear restriction is not mentioned on the Steam page.
This restriction has caused a fair amount of backlash from fans who were hoping to jump into the game for free, especially given the marketing at the Summer Games Fest that presented it as a free to play game. The current Steam reviews are mixed, with a lot of fans complaining about the free option and essentially being forced to pay $30 if they want to be able to play the game properly.
Multiple reviews suggest that this should be presented as a demo rather than a free to play game, which seems like a very fair suggestion. The free version essentially is a demo, offering you a glimpse of what Dark and Darker is without giving you full access to the game, and marketing it as free to play feels a little unfair.
Dark and Darker is a difficult game to market, given how basic it looks in action. When watching a streamer react to the Summer Games Fest their first reaction, having not seen Dark and Darker before, was that it must be a VR game because of how janky it looks, and the chat echoed this. When it was revealed to not be in VR they were shocked and remarked that it was a good job it is free to play because no one would want to pay for that.
With reactions like that from people seeing the game for the first time, the free to play language is certainly understandable, but when players hit the paywall very quickly you have to question how smart the decision is in the long run. Rewording the free version to be a demo or limited trial would surely lead to fewer angered fans and better Steam reviews.
It’s a shame that the conversation around Dark and Darker is mostly around this free to play version given that it really is a great game and can offer a lot of hours of content if you stump up the cash. Hopefully something gets changed to make the free version feel like less of a bait and switch, so that Dark and Darker can finally get back on track.