Dark and Darker pledges to fight back against cheaters with a Discord bot with a 30-day lifespan

Dark and Darker artwork — (Image credit: Ironmace)

Embattled PvP dungeon crawler Dark and Darker has a new fight on its hands, but at least this one won't happen in a courtroom. It needs to clamp down on the cheaters that have taken to the game after it finally hit early access a couple of weeks ago, in spite of the legal troubles that continue to keep it off Steam.

"Right now we are fighting a difficult fight against cheaters as we gather information with [Dark and Darker's anticheat tech] Ironshield," wrote Ironmace dev "Graysun" in a post on the game's Discord (via PCGamesN). That means the studio is bringing out the big guns, by which I mean a Discord bot that you can send evidence of cheating, so long as you do it in a timely manner.

"The fight against cheating is a serious priority for us, and to further support our community we will offer a Discord account you can directly message with your evidence of cheating for the next 30 days," wrote Graysun on August 17, encouraging players with video evidence of cheating to upload it to a bot called "Ironshield Support" on the game's Discord server. Players have to include cheaters' names alongside the message, and screenshots, apparently, don't count as sufficient evidence. Video only, says Ironmace.

It sounds to me like the bot is a stop-gap measure, something that's intended to let Ironmace gather info on the numbers and methods of Dark and Darker's cheaters without players spamming their individual inboxes with complaints. "Please use this method instead of contacting other Ironmace staff directly through Discord Messages for the next 30 days," wrote Graysun, before warning that sending non-cheating related info to the bot could see players booted from the server.

One would hope the bot will eventually be replaced by a more robust cheat reporting mechanism, ideally one not located entirely within the game's Discord. Perhaps that explains the bot's 30-day time limit; I've reached out to Ironmace to find out, and I'll update this piece if I get a reply.

Dark and Darker has had a rocky ride ever since it became the darling of the February Steam Next Fest. After those high highs, it was brought low by accusations of asset theft by publisher Nexon, accusations which saw Ironmace's offices raided by police and the game itself booted from Steam. Ironmace denies the accusations and has, at least, managed to push out an early access version of the game since then, but the future still seems uncertain for this one.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.