The makers of Darkwood [official site] have uploaded a full version of their wonderfully dreadful new horror game to a torrent site. Acid Wizard Studio say it’s for people who want to play Darkwood but don’t have enough money to buy it, giving them a “safe” version to download. They also hope that this will dissuade people buying the game from key resellers, who they call a “cancer that is leeching off this industry”. Blimey.

Darkwood is a top-down survival horror game set in terrible woods filled with creepy, spooky, and downright dreadful things. Explore, scavenge, quest, and try to survive. It launched last week after three years in early access.

Development has been a long and often difficult journey, as Acid Wizard Studio told in today’s announcement. Now it’s finally out, they say, they’re being inundated with e-mails trying to blag free Steam keys with the assumed intent to resell ’em. This “makes it impossible for us to do any giveaways or send keys to people who actually don’t have the money to play Darkwood.”

Acid Wizard Studio join a long line of developers not best pleased with resellers.

They say they were also moved by a player who requested a refund “because he didn’t want his parents to be stressed out when seeing the bill at the end of the month.”

So to heck with it! They have uploaded the latest version of Darkwood DRM-free to torrent site The Pirate Bay.

“If you don’t have the money and want to play the game, we have a safe torrent on the Pirate Bay of the latest version of Darkwood (1.0 hotfix 3), completely DRM-free. There’s no catch, no added pirate hats for characters or anything like that. We have just one request: if you like Darkwood and want us to continue making games, consider buying it in the future, maybe on a sale, through Steam, GOG or Humble Store. But please, please, don’t buy it through any key reselling site. By doing that, you’re just feeding the cancer that is leeching off this industry.”

If that’s you, hey, there you go. If not, hey, don’t take the piss.

Darkwood costs £11.99/13,99€/$14.99 on Steam, GOG, and the Humble Store.

I believe our Adam has been playing Darkwood and planning to tell us all wot he thinks but, between a holiday and attending Gamescom, he’s been a busy boy with many other things to do. Hopefully he’ll find time. Everything I’ve heard about Darkwood is good but I’m a big fraidy baby and seek reassurance.



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