After adopting a free-to-play model which was initially poorly received by the community, the Dark and Darker devs have been working on expanding it. First they allowed F2P players to carry better gear into runs, and are now letting them into the game’s Marketplace, albeit under stricter conditions.

Hotfix 53 saw numerous changes to Dark and Darker‘s gameplay, such as enemy and quest balance, bug fixes, and so on. However, just like the previous hotfix, the main selling point here is the expansion of free-to-play options for players who wish to continue under this model. They will now be able to access the game’s Marketplace, where regular “Legendary status” players can buy and sell items to make an extra buck or two. F2P users will only be allowed to purchase stuff to incentivize an upgrade at some point down the line. The developers justified this with what they viewed as a “pay to win” issue arising when worse-geared F2P users clashed with fully armored Legendary-status holders.