Dark and Darker’s new update cracks down on hackers

Dark and Darker official artwork.
(Image credit: Ironmace Games)

This month, the medieval action RPG Dark and Darker finally entered early access. To mark the occasion, a new update has been rolled out which has said bye-bye to hackers, and hello to rare loot.

While the PC game is available to play right now, gamers can’t find it on Steam. In case you were unaware, the developers of Dark and Darker, Ironmace Games, were accused by a different game dev studio, Nexon, of making the game using stolen code. Though this led to a police search, Ironmace claimed that “it was a quick process and nothing was found” (via NME).

However, Nexon also issued a cease and desist, and the game was delisted from Steam shortly after. Although the devs have expressed that they intend to get the title back on the enormous digital storefront eventually, for now, it can only be played via Ironmace’s own game launcher, Blacksmith.

As PCGamesN reports, on Friday (August 11), a number of changes and bug fixes were rolled out which should improve the experience for everyone who was already playing fair and square. Bugged locations that let players step out of the map have been sorted out, as have some doors and treasure chests that were pushing players into spots that they couldn’t escape from. The anti-hack system has also been improved, so in theory, there’ll be fewer cheaters out and about. 

Bug fixes aside, there’s no doubt that the change that most players will be excited about is the increased drop rate for rare loot. The drop rate of Uncommon items has been increased on the whole, and it’s now possible to get Epic items from any chest in the game. Players are also now more likely to find Epic items in Lions Head, Ornate, and Golden Chests - welcome news for loot hunters across the Dark and Darker community.

If you’re on the lookout for your next favorite game, be sure to check out our selection of the best RPGs and best open-world PC games.

Catherine Lewis
News Writer, TechRadar Gaming

Catherine is a News Writer for TechRadar Gaming. Armed with a journalism degree from The University of Sheffield, she was sucked into the games media industry after spending far too much time on her university newspaper writing about Pokémon and cool indie games, and realising that was a very cool job, actually. She previously spent 19 months working at GAMINGbible as a full-time journalist. She loves all things Nintendo, and will never stop talking about Xenoblade Chronicles.