Dark and Darker devs ask fans to torrent April playtest because "it's taking time to resolve the Steam situation"

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The devs warn the login screen "may be confusing"

Four adventurers journey into a dim dungeon
(Image credit: Ironmace)

The long-awaited Dark and Darker April 14 playtest is here, but only through non-traditional distribution methods, as the devs are asking players to torrent the latest beta.

Previous Dark and Darker playtests were distributed through Steam, but the game's been delisted from Valve's platform in the wake of an ongoing legal battle. In a new update posted to the game's official Discord, the devs say that "Unfortunately, due to the complexities of our situation, especially across international lines, it is taking time to resolve the Steam situation. In order for us to keep our promise to our fans we've had to go old school this time."

By "old school" they mean "torrenting." Torrents have historically been pretty closely associated with piracy, but they're really just an effective way of distributing large files when you don't have the server infrastructure of, say, Steam. So here we are.

You can grab the magnet link to input into your torrent client at the Discord link above, or through a tweet from the developers. The devs will warn you - and I'll echo them here - that you should not attempt to grab the link from any unofficial source, as there's no telling what might get installed on your PC if you download a torrent from an unscrupulous source.

The new client will have a login screen that "may be confusing," according to the devs. You'll just need to put in an ID and password in order to create your account.

Dustin Bailey
Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.