Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is in a weird place. The far-futuristic heir apparent to Vermintide’s throne when it comes to ultra-violent co-op swarm shooter-slasher games feels like a work-in-progress–even by the standards of a game that’s designed to evolve over the years. I said as much in my review. Everything around the rather excellent core loop of tearing your way through suicide missions around a 40K Hive feels abjectly barebones - from the hub area to the item shop.
But the game has a bigger problem. Darktide, which has all the makings of a multi-platform game, is not only a single-platform game (PC) at the moment, but even within that it’s audience has been forcefully fragmented in a particularly obnoxious way.
While I’m all for diversity of services and competition on PC, to lock the multiplayer communities on those different storefronts away from each other even though they all exist on the same damn platform feels like a crime against gaming, and a black mark against PC Game Pass. Darktide has for a long time been one of the highlights on Game Pass–a solid reason in itself to trickle your money into its subscription service–but among murmurs that the matchmaking pool is dwindling on Game Pass for players at the higher levels of the game, that has knock-on implications for the viability of Game Pass as a multiplayer platform. It’s not a good look for anyone.
By splitting the PC audience (something that would’ve been unthinkable just a few years ago), Darktide really isn’t doing itself any favours. Add to that the fact that the game isn’t out on consoles yet, and is a timed Xbox exclusive when it does finally come to console, and you have an ecosystem that’s far more fractured and staggered than it really should be.
Beyond that, it’s fair to ask why Darktide player numbers are dwindling on Game Pass as high-level players look for fellow end-gamers. Maybe it’s because, well, there just isn’t that much endgame to speak of; make your gear a bit better, chase those penances, wait around for the randomised shop timers to get that perfect piece of gear. Bosses aren’t exactly plentiful, there isn’t a ton of modes, and missions don’t give you that Vermintide 2-style endorphin rush of showering you with chests at the end of each one.
I think that’s part of the issue too. Vermintide 2, while not technically as flashy, is a far more fleshed-out game than Darktide 2. The randomised rogue-lite Chaos Wastes mode is a hit, its five heroes can be played with four distinct classes each, and even now it’s getting extra campaign missions in the form of Trail of Treachery. I was about to say that it’s only a matter of time until Darktide’s player numbers dwindle below Vermintide 2’s, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least that as I write this, there are 7390 people playing Vermintide 2 and only 5630 playing Darktide according to Steamcharts. It’s already happened.
So is there any good news in all this? Sure, in all probability none of this will matter in a couple of years’ time. Let’s not forget that Vermintide 2 was a slow starter as well, experiencing a similar post-release plummet in player numbers upon its release in March 2018, before picking up momentum again the best part of a year later. Fatshark has form for being a bit of a slow starter with its games, and based on what a fine beast Vermintide 2 ended up being, they do deserve the benefit of doubt with Darktide.
But there’s also no question that Darktide faces design and infrastructure problems that Vermintide 2 didn’t, so how about Fatshark kicks off the game’s redemption by sorting out cross-platform play between Game Pass and Steam…