Dark and Darker players lose progress to a server wipe intended to combat cheaters

Dark and Darker has received a server wipe that has seen players lose their progress but is an attempt to take on a recent influx of cheaters.

When describing the wipe and the incoming changes in a recent news post on the official website, developer Ironmace Games said “This first wipe occurred much sooner than we expected due to challenges we faced from exploiters. We have learned from this experience and have updated the game and our services to be more robust against these adversaries.”

No more cheater-targeted specifics were shared, but the full wipe has reset all players’ gold, skills, items, and character levels. Resetting everything in such a move can be an effective approach – albeit a nuclear one – to tackling cheaters as everyone is reduced to ‘zero’ and the developers often have a chance to rectify things in the process. 

It’s not the first time that Ironmace Games has had to deal with nefarious users in the dungeon-crawling PvP game though. It was only last week that Ironmace Games declared that tackling cheaters was “a serious priority” for them. Then, a week before that, the developer released an update intended to crack down on hackers. It’s been a hive of anti-cheating and anti-hacking activity at Ironmace in recent weeks, it seems.

But, it’s not all doom and gloom as the maintenance also includes details about what other changes are coming. Among many details laid out in the patch notes and news post, the return of voice chat will be welcomed by many, while there are also changes to the efficacy of healing potions, bandage application time, as well as a host of balance changes to the Bard class. You can read them all in the official post.

While the servers are now back online, it’s worth players and fans knowing that Ironmace has said it wants to implement further changes based on community feedback, as well as deploy “frequent balance updates during the upcoming weeks”. So expect some further disruption and updates.

If you’re looking for more games like Dark and Darker to play, then check out our guide to the best PC games, and the best co-op games going right now.