"Rest assured that we are working around the clock to safeguard the continuance of Dark and Darker," Ironmace wrote in a message on its Discord server. "Unfortunately, due to the complexities of Dark And Darker Gold 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. In practical terms, that means that if you want to take part in the playtest, you're going to have to torrent the new client. This has resulted in two things happening on the Dark and Darker subreddit:
For those who weren't around for the glory days of peer-to-peer piracy in the early 2000s, BitTorrent is a communications protocol that enables decentralized file sharing. To be fair, it's also not the most user-friendly software in existence—this is what the Microtorrent client looks like in action, for instance.
It's a bit like FTP (you know what that is, right?) except that instead of downloading files from a single source, you're getting them from multiple sources, called "seeds." If you're the considerate sort, you'll also seed the torrent yourself, because the more seeds, the better it is for everyone trying to get the file.
It's definitely more of a hassle than a simple Steam install, and the download speeds are a little slow right now because of the relatively small number of people seeding the torrent. But the good news is that by all reports it works, and instead of being irritated by the extra work involved, fans are throwing kudos to Ironmace for powering through it.
"This is the most dedication I have ever seen from a studio," kaleoh wrote in the Playtest 5 Megathread. "This is just the best fucking thing in the world. I cannot believe that they made this deadline despite all of Dark And Darker Gold for sale the legal issues surrounding the studio. Absolute legends."
