Steam's Dark & Light Has Been Abandoned

CanPanther · May 2021

Despite multiple attempts at communication from players, Snail has refused to engage in any kind of honest, open, and public discussion about the future of its current PC edition of DnL, available on Steam. The game's last bugfix was Sept. 2019, and only 2 very small, detail-free announcements from Snail Games about a possible game re-write were posted thru Steam (Feb. 2019 and Mar. 2020), and none through their Discord server. In fact, there has only been 2 official posts in total from Snail Games since Nov. 2019 until now, 1.5 years of utter silence.

A couple of days ago, Snail Games released DnL Mobile into its 2nd beta test, available for download only from its Chinese language website. It also includes a ported PC version not available on Steam. Release notes about the beta were also issued (http://dnlsy.woniu.com/all/ - Google will issue a malicious program warning). This is the only mention of the PC edition within them (translated from Chinese using Google):

This test will also test the PC desktop version. Players download the PC desktop version on the official website and log in to the PC desktop version by scanning the code. Remember to set up the shortcut keys first to make aiming and output more convenient and relieve fatigue.

The gameplay in the video is very different, to the point where it is basically a different game altogether. While this is not a bad thing, especially if it addresses important issues like duping/undermeshing/cheating on the PvP servers, what is bothersome is the fact that the current Steam PC version is supposed the EA test group and players are being shut out and left uninformed about everything that is going on with the project. To add another layer to this, 3 other EA titles using Ark code have already been abandoned w/o a word from Snail (lead dev of Outlaws of the Old West has stated publicly on Steam that Snail refuses to fund any more development). Snail is also using a different developer to create this mobile version. They had fired and sued the original studio in Sept. 2018, brought in in-house devs to develop some small bugfixes until the fall of 2019, and then stopped all development and has completely shut out Steam players from the whole process since then.

While Dark and Light is still available to purchase on Steam, as are the other abandoned games, and they are still enjoyable and playable, just don't expect any kind of support or update from Snail in their future. This version of DnL doesn't seem to have one.