But Ironmace had already announced a fifth playtest to run from April 14-19 and dammit they were going to get players back into the game again. So they asked everyone to torrent it. I can't believe thousands of players had to learn how to torrent in the year 2023 Dark And Darker Gold. Things only got more wild as the weekend went on:

Dark and Darker servers went down on Saturday for an extended time while no developers were around to fix the issue.

Ironmace somehow completed two hotfixes (also distributed by torrent) over the course of the weekend.
Dark and Darker concept art - a mage casts a light spell carefully exploring a dungeon with a knight and rogue

And despite the total trash fire, players are absolutely loving it. YouTube is full of videos of Dark and Darker players showing off and sharing their builds. Reddit has threads defending the developers and mourning the end of the playtest. The biggest point of contention in the official Discord is disappointment that Ironmace didn't extend the end date of the playtest to make up for the downtime over the weekend. If another game were being so tragically messy, its own fans may well have turned on it, but Ironmace is a small indie team and Dark and Darker is just a damn fun game.

Before the Nexon beef even came to light, Ironmace was presenting itself as an underdog with a mission. A statement on its website reads:

We are a merry band of veteran game developers disillusioned by the exploitative and greedy practices we once helped create. We are experts who have worked on many of the biggest hits in Korea.

We’ve seen first hand how corporate game companies sell their soul for the easy payday. We are disappointed to see them doubling down on more and more exploitative practices, becoming more like casinos instead of bringing joy to gamers buy Dark And Darker Gold Coins.