Teaming Up Now Banned in Dark and Darker

You might want to reconsider your gameplay strategy if you’ve been primarily playing Dark and Darker with friends. Ironmace announced today they’d be banning any “teaming” players with a 14-day ban.

If you’ve played Dark and Darker for any amount of time, you’ve seen how prevalent teaming is among the community. Either groups of friends get together in Discord and start dungeon diving, or players meet up in dungeons and decide over VOIP to join forces to survive against mobs and other players alike. This is now a bannable offense in either case.

Does This Mean No More Cooperative Play for Dark and Darker?

The community reception to the announcement on Discord was and continues to be not good. It’s very true that some players prefer a one-on-one PvPvE dungeoneering experience, with help from other players to take on enemies; but a very large portion of the Dark and Darker playerbase play with friends or prefer to roll the dice in trying to team up with randoms to survive. DaD survives on these “five-minute friendships.”

What Does the Announcement Say?

Despite this being a massive change to the game, there’s no mention of it anywhere yet but the official Discord server. The announcement from Ironmace’s Graysun was posted on the Discord’s announcements channel earlier today and reads as follows:

“Hello @everyone!

Over the last few weeks we have clearly heard your concerns regarding teaming. At first our stance was, as long as players are naturally grouping in the dungeons then it was considered okay. Unfortunately, this has become extremely common and we have decided that is time to adjust this stance. Starting today, if you are caught grouping with another team to kill other players inside the dungeon, you will be banned.

If you just avoid each other then this is okay, but actively fighting together is no longer considered okay even if formed through VOIP.

The first offense will be a temporary 14-day ban, and the next offense will be a permanent ban. If you catch users clearly grouping together to fight other teams, please send any video evidence to the @Anti-Cheat Support account!

Thank you all very much!

THIS ONLY APPLIES FOR EVIDENCE GATHERED FROM NOW ON, PLEASE DO NOT SEND US PAST EVIDENCE.“

This announcement follows weeks of rough patches from the developer in an attempt to balance the game’s itemization, with the most recent wipe only happening last week. Between the inconsistent patching and this latest change in direction, one can’t help but worry about the future of Dark and Darker. NCSoft couldn’t kill it, but it’s possible Ironmace themselves could put it in the ground just by barring players from playing cooperatively.