Dark and Darker PC has added a free to play option in a new move from developer Ironmace that offers two account tiers and different experiences.
The move comes after the “unforgiving hardcore fantasy FPS dungeon PvPvE adventure” was pulled from Steam a year ago after legal issues over copyright infringement accusations from Nexon. Ironmace denied the allegations and the lawsuit was dismissed last summer, but the game has been off Steam since. Dark and Darker is in Early Access and currently has a listing on the Epic Games Store, which went live back in March. At that time, Ironmace was “confident” in its PC rollout after months of independent Early Access after the initial legal issues.
The latest update from the team comes ahead of their new season, and not only adds a free to play account option, they converted any paid accounts from those who bought the Standard or Founder’s editions to “Legendary” accounts. There are a few key differences between the accounts, and one can upgrade a F2P account to a Legendary one soon.
Free accounts are limited to one character and can only play Normals, which gates off the High Roller dungeon options in the dungeon crawler. You can still try the game out and play all maps, complete some quests, and collect some loot. It is essentially a free trial account, but it should still work to get some curious folks in and perhaps boost the population a little bit for some period of time. They’re potentially smart moves if things have been lagging on their way to a rollout.
Other changes in this update are intended to decrease the learning curve a bit in the early game, get rid of many junk items, and reduce some imbalances. All of these moves make sense together.
Dark and Darker doesn’t have a launch date just yet. A mobile version is in development from Krafton.
