Dark and Darker is moving away from its original free-to-play model, and its developer has pledged an announcement for a playtest soon.
Developer Ironmace has recently been the subject of an intense battle among employees. While a playtest was originally meant to take place later in April, the game was pulled from Steam last month in March due to a DMCA takedown request, which Ironmace later called "baseless". Right now, no one yet knows if the playtest is even taking place as originally planned.
Now, though, the developer is attempting to right the ship. Earlier today, on April 6, one developer in the Dark and Darker Discord stated they would make an announcement about the playtest "as soon as we can," also apologizing for the wait and the uncertainty surrounding the playtest originally intended to start on April 14.
Elsewhere, the developer also revealed Dark and Darker is likely moving away from a free-to-play model. "This hasn't been decided yet," an Ironmace developer says when a fan asks how much the game would cost at launch. "We are leaning away from the F2P model and will likely have a packaged release on Steam."
"We will plan to price it accordingly with other similar games on Steam after doing more research," the developer concludes. Considering Ironmace doesn't yet know how much Dark and Darker's full launch will retail for when it eventually releases, we could be in for a cheap or considerably expensive launch.
Finally, the developer has shot down a theory that the employee who put up a recent GoFundMe had been sacked. It had been noted that one former developer at Ironmace had been stripped of their roles in the developer Discord. This person, who goes by the Discord moniker "Luci," previously set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for a copyright dispute, but the campaign was deleted very swiftly, with Ironmace stating that it was "prematurely" revealed by an employee.
Dark and Darker players speculated that this Luci had had their responsibilities revoked in the Discord, and perhaps even their responsibilities in the wider game removed entirely. There's a lot of speculation here right now, but it does shoot down one common theory that the Ironmace developer who initiated the GoFundMe campaign was the victim of a hack.
It's been an extremely volatile time for Ironmace of late, even facing a police raid of their offices over claims of stolen code (which the developer said there was nothing to worry about). The developer is desperately trying to bring things back under control, and you've got to imagine these direct messages to the Dark and Darker community are the first stage in that process.
