Dark and Darker's demo version briefly made a big splash on Steam (opens in new tab) during last month's Next Fest event. The bottom line is: "How do you make money from a very popular game?"

In a recent Discord Q&A (opens in new tab) with a developer called SDF, we learned that Ironmace cannot keep Dark and Darker online on game sales alone, that office space is scarce, and that despite nonetheless, we learned that the studio is not quite sure how it intends to monetize the game when it is finally released.

When asked what their "plan for monetization features" was, SDF responded only that it was "a monetization model that players can understand." Similarly, when players asked if Dark and Darker would eventually "include something like a battle pass or cosmetic store," SDF could only answer, "It's hard to answer because we haven't fully decided yet."

Other players asked almost the same question and got the same answer, but all the SDF could really say was: game sales alone "cannot cover the cost of running the server on an ongoing basis," meaning that further monetization will be necessary at some point, but Ironmace "will not be able to [ pay to win] will never happen," he asserted.

While SDF never says this directly, it sounds as if Ironmace is currently struggling to keep up with the demands of the business: developing a game that gets a lot of attention quickly while expanding the business behind it; SDF told one player that the headquarters' Despite the fact that "there are no more seats in the office," the studio is "still short-staffed" and staff are forced to move their desks closer together.

Indeed, SDF could not even say how much "Dark and Darker" will sell for when it is finally released, but commented that it "would not like to see the initial purchasers of the game lose the value of their purchase in the future due to excessive discount rates." Nevertheless, Iron Mace will soon have to figure out what to do beyond the inability to monetize.

In addition to this, Dark and Darker still faces allegations that it copied assets and code (opens in new tab) from the cancelled Nexon project P3, which Ironmace's CEO has denied. Perhaps things will have calmed down by next month's playtest (opens in new tab).