In February, Ironmace promised one more playtest of Dark and Darker (opens in new tab) before the game was released to early access. Shortly thereafter, however, the situation became unexpectedly complicated: a legal dispute with Nexon resurfaced, and Dark and Darker was removed from Steam (opens in new tab).

However, Ironmace wants to proceed with the final playtest, so they are doing things the old-fashioned way, i.e., literally.

"Rest assured that we are working around the clock to keep 'Dark and Darker' going," Ironmace wrote in a message on the Discord server (opens in new tab). Unfortunately, our situation is complicated and it is taking time to resolve the Steam situation, especially since it crosses international boundaries." In order to keep our promise to our fans, we have had to take the old approach in this case."

The reality is that if you want to participate in the playtest, you will have to torrent the new client. This resulted in two things happening on the Dark and Darker subreddit:

1. memes.

2. a request for help understanding what torrents are (opens in new tab).

For those unfamiliar with the glory days of peer-to-peer piracy in the early 2000s, BitTorrent is a communication protocol that allows for distributed file sharing. It is a bit like FTP (you know what it is, right?) except that instead of downloading files from a single source, you get files from multiple sources, called "seeds." The more seeds you have, the better off it is for everyone trying to get that file, because the more seeds you have, the better off you are.

Torrents were all the rage for a time in the early 2000s, but their use has declined dramatically in recent years.

To be fair, Microtorrent is not even the easiest software in existence to use.

You also need to be a little careful about what you download and where you download it from." Do not get torrents from other sources, as we cannot guarantee the integrity of any other links!" Ironmace warned in capital letters. He added: "All future patches will also be distributed this way, so please get your links only from the official DIscord announcement channel.

Ironmace also stated that all future announcements regarding this playtest will be made on the official IronmaceGames Twitter account (opens in new tab). (The studio had initially said that announcements would also be made on the Discord server, but "due to Discord's policy of not allowing links to torrents," the announcements will be made on the Twitter account.)

It is definitely more work than a simple Steam install, and download speeds are a bit slower now due to the relatively small number of people seeding torrents. But the good news is that, according to all reports, it works, and instead of being frustrating with the extra work involved, fans are throwing praise to the ironmace that powers through it.

"This is the most dedicated studio I've ever seen," kaleoh wrote in the Playtest 5 mega-thread (opens in new tab)." This is truly the best damn game in the world. I can't believe they met this deadline despite all the legal issues surrounding the studio. It's an absolute legend.

There are also recollections of pure joy, and frankly, this may be my favorite part of the whole thing:

The latest "Dark and Darker" playtest is now open and free to join (if you can figure out the torrent). Last I checked, it is expected to run through April 19, after which we will have to wait and see how the Ironmace and Nexon lawsuits go.