Fatshark's "Warhammer 40,000: Darktide" will be available in Early Access in November 2022, and despite being a pretty good game as it stands, it is far from finished. Many players quickly lost patience, and reviews on Steam are mostly negative, complaining about the same thing. Needless to say, the presence of microtransactions in the game has not helped the mood either.

The studio has now released some sort of statement, along with a list of minor tweaks in the new patch, but I'm not sure how convincing it will be to players. This follows an open letter (opens in new tab) from Fatshark's CEO and co-founder:

"We set out to create a highly engaging and stable game with depth that would keep people playing for weeks, not hours," Martin Wahlund writes (opens in new tab). 'We have not been able to live up to those expectations. Our sole focus in the coming months will be to respond to the feedback you have given us. In particular, we will continue to focus on providing a complete crafting system, a more rewarding progression loop, and continue to work on optimizing the stability and performance of the game."

This means delays to some seasonal content and the suspension of premium cosmetic releases." We could not continue down this path knowing that we are not addressing many feedback areas in today's game."

The new patch notes address the mixed reactions to the announcement (some players welcome Wahlund's candor and change of direction, while others say it is too late). Players want some kind of roadmap for the future of the game, but so far there is none: "We have adjusted our short-term plans so that we can work more on our top priorities, which are primarily focused on getting the game closer to what it should be," CM Catfish wrote.

They further state that "certain features we had hoped to have in the game by now had to be postponed" and promise further updates once the studio has "more concrete plans." It is unclear what is being referred to here, but Darktide fans at PCG Tower are nervous that this is an oblique reference to further delays in crafting. In any case, it appears that Fatshark is currently in the midst of a major reorganization of its gaming priorities: whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, we'll have to wait and see.

The list of bug fixes (open in new tab) is more notable for the fact that there are dozens of them than for a single tweak, reflecting the fact that this is a game where many people are running into performance and technical problems. Rather than balancing the weapons and their various effects on enemies, the Kinetic Deflection ability no longer makes you invincible to certain enemies. We especially like that you can no longer stop your brain from exploding: "An exploit has been fixed where switching weapons after a 100% danger brain burst before it explodes will prevent it from exploding."

The new weapon is now more effective against enemies.

The extensive list of fixes also includes solutions to more serious crashing problems, with Fatshark stating that it has fixed "numerous" instances.

Crafting has been one of the main priorities for both players and studios since the game's release, but not to put too fine a point on it, Darktide is still a ridiculous technical mess and will not be added anytime soon. The sad part is that there is a pretty great game at the heart of this game, but if the studio can't reverse its current momentum, it may never reach the "very attractive and stable" level with all the promised features. This game will eventually be good. The question is whether the players will still be there.