After weeks of radio silence, the developers of Dark and Darker Gold have announced that the fifth playtest previously scheduled to get started today can be so happening, but fans need to the extra mile so that they can play.

Due to some DMCA takedown from Korean gaming giant Nexon, the fantasy-themed extraction shooter Dark and Darker isn't available on Steam, where all previous playtests have happened. Instead, developer Ironmace has posted a download for that game client using a torrent site inside the official Dark and Darker Discord server.

"Rest assured that people are working 7 days a week to safeguard the continuance of Dark and Darker," Ironmace writes inside an announcement. "Unfortunately, as a result of complexities in our situation, especially across international lines, it's taking time to eliminate the Steam situation. In order for us to help keep our promise to your fans we've been forced to go old school this time."

Ironmace warns that users should only have the torrent from links officially posted by Ironmace. The developer states that future patches throughout the playtest are going to be distributed in the same manner. As the game isn't on Steam, Ironmace has clarified that users should create a merchant account with an ID and password when logging into sites to the playtest.

The playtest is scheduled to last until April 19. This specific playtest looks to merely be for English-speaking players, as Ironmace apologized for that game being unavailable in Korean caused of "Korean game regulations" and also the lack of localization for other regions inside the current playtest build.

After rising to popularity over the most recent Steam Next Fest, the place where the game's fourth playtest regularly saw greater than 100,000 concurrent players, Dark and Darker was recently stripped away from Steam in the midst of a legitimate dispute with Nexon. Ironmace, which is based in Korea, comprises numerous developers who previously worked at Nexon using a canceled project named P3 that Nexon says shares numerous similarities with Dark and Darker.

Nexon recently filed copyright claims against Ironmace in addition to a lawsuit against a particular Ironmace employee consequently, arguing that Dark and Darker was built using stolen code and assets from P3. Ironmace has denied those allegations, claiming that Nexon cannot copyright a sports genre in which dark and darker gold is built from the earth up using Unreal Engine assets and handmade code.

The current playtest was originally slated for Dark and Darker's final test before entering Steam Early Access sometime later this coming year. It's currently unclear if your ongoing legal situation is different from those plans in case fans should expect additional playtests in the future.