The developer of Dark And Darker has announced that it will be banning players who are making “mobs of insiders”, leaving fans worried that innocent players might be caught in the crossfire.
“Starting today, if you are caught grouping with another team to kill other players inside the dungeon, you will be banned,” said developer Ironmace on the game’s Discord (via PCGamesN).
Sanctions will be a temporary 14-day ban for teaming up, and if identified to be doing it in a second offense, they will be permanently banned.
Naturally grouping together in the game is passable, Ironmace said, and it is “not looking to penalise players that team up temporarily for unique emergent experiences”.
Players themselves expressed their anxieties that this approach would eradicate the emergent moments through teaming up.
“The game is intended to be [Dungeons & Dragons], half the fun is playing the role. Beyond that, the guidelines for this are so flimsy that we will 100 per cent have people getting banned even when paying the game organically,” said one.
In response, Ironmace clarified that it “[reserves] the right to ban people we think are unambiguously violating the unfair teaming policy”, but that it will require a “multi-faceted approach” to taking action.
“We are not against roleplaying for fun,” continued the developer. “We are looking to cut down on the blatant malicious teamers that are brazenly abusing loopholes.
“If you deliberately and repeatedly team up with the purpose of creating large mobs for the purpose of unfairly dominating a dungeon then you already know who you are and we will be monitoring and taking action against these egregious cases.”
In other gaming news, the actor who played Quiet in Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain has reflected on the design of the heroine, saying: “Of course there were so many other options you could have gone with.”