On November 30, 2023, the co-op shooter Warhammer 40,000: Darktide celebrates its 1st anniversary. After a somewhat rocky start, the developers at Fatshark changed their strategy. This seems to be paying off, as the current reviews on Steam indicate.
What is the situation with Darktide? The successor to the successful Vermintide series gained over 100,000 players at release in 2022. However, the enthusiasm did not last long. Players were disappointed by the lack of depth, performance, and balancing issues led to declining player numbers and reviews.
Overall, Darktide holds “mixed” reviews: About 61% of players recommend the dark co-op shooter on Steam. In response, the developers announced they would postpone paid content and focus on fixing the game first.
The strategy seems to be working, as player numbers and reviews are currently recovering. For the anniversary, there will be two free updates.
Developers impress with class rework, announce free update
What is the current situation? At the beginning of October 2023, the announced “Class Overhaul” was released, which gave the co-op shooter real RPG skill trees. As data from the analytics site SteamDB shows, Darktide achieved player numbers last seen in December 2022.
For the last 24 hours, the peak is nearly 20,000 concurrent players – almost five times the numbers before the update.
The developers’ efforts are reflected in the reviews as well: For the last 30 days, the rating is 86% “very positive”. However, a look into the reviews shows that players are still quite divided:
- The Box Ghost™ (not recommended): “I am VERY close to recommending the game, but not quite. The game is noticeably better with the class rework, so I would almost-but-not-quite recommend it, but there are two big things it needs to improve: [Revamp the crafting system and add new maps, as well as more cover to existing maps.]”
- Zarmanos (not recommended): “Hi, this is my 100-hour review. Good: The devs. Bad: The executives. […]”
- Mr.Exterminatus (recommended): “Okay, it is better now. Do not pre-order games.”
- DeviousSquirrel (recommended): “It is worth buying the game now.”
- Warnstaff (not recommended): “I used to recommend this game, but the ongoing broken promise of adding solo play ‘shortly after launch’ and the lack of accessible mod/exploit options for my Steam Deck […] led to the premature demise of the game for me.”
It seems that Darktide is on the right track, but the dissatisfaction and mistrust of the players run deep and are not so easily resolved.
What’s next? With “The Traitor Curse,” a two-part anniversary update is set to follow. The first part is expected to launch in November, with the second part to follow in December. The developers promise the following contents for Part 1:
- A new cinematic is supposed to showcase the motives of the Moebian 6th.
- The “Carnival” is set to feature a “notorious zone” that lures players with cross-border distractions and conversations.
- With the new zone, there will also be a new mission.
- Additionally, a new “investigate” feature and an update for the veteran skill tree are expected.
Now, it remains to be seen whether Fatshark can achieve a similar miracle as CD Projekt with Cyberpunk 2077:
