After Valve mostly stepped away from making new games in the 2010s, Swedish developer Fatshark stepped in to be heir apparent to the mighty Left 4 Dead.
With 2015’s Warhammer: The End Times – Vermintide, the studio scratched that particular itch by swapping zombies for the giant rats of the Skaven, cleverly adapting the Warhammer fantasy universe to a similar first-person co-op experience of crowd control, fraught escapes, and unpredictable appearances by tricksy enemy types.
With 2018’s Warhammer: Vermintide 2, the studio expanded on every aspect of that first game, and built it to last, with progression systems and classes that made it a perennial co-op favourite. Then with Warhammer 40,000: Darktide in 2022, the studio graduated to Games Workshop’s more popular sci-fi licence, bringing a visually stunning rendition of one grimy corner of that vast universe to life with similarly high quality co-op gameplay.
The bones of a great game were there, but Darktide didn’t immediately have the long tail of Vermintide 2, and player numbers dropped off quickly. Put side-by-side with today’s version of the game, which has new modes, missions, weapons, and deep character progression, the launch version seems more like a Steam Early Access release in retrospect.
“Our philosophy is that, as long as you come back when we do an update, we’re happy”
Victor Magnuson, Fatshark
“Initially we had a really good reception,” says Victor Magnuson, design director, speaking at Summer Game Fest’s Play Days event in June. “Everyone really liked it – they liked the missions and so forth. But as the weeks went on, people started complaining about the surrounding systems, the meta systems, like the progression, the loot system, how you acquire weapons, and so on.”
Fatshark’s past successes ended up hanging over the team.
“I think part of it was comparisons to Vermintide [2], which had been a live game for five years by then; we updated that game with a lot of things. So players expected all of that stuff to be present in Darktide as well at launch, which was sadly not possible.”
Following launch, the developers went back to the drawing board to get player sentiment into a better place, and make the game as enduring as it had the potential to be.
“We really sat down and looked at all the systems and started picking it apart,” Magnuson says. “The first thing we wanted to fix was the class system in the game. Our initial plan was to have it fairly similar to how it is in Vermintide, and then do multiple classes in each class: so we’d have three veteran classes, then release them one-by-one.”
That approach, however, ended up not being quite right for Darktide, with Fatshark opting for something more flexible.
“Instead of doing that, we decided to create the talent system we have now, with this bigger talent tree that gives more freedom to the player to decide how they want their veteran to play. So that was the big major update we did, which was combined with the Xbox launch [in 2023]. That is when the popularity of the game started turning, so a lot of players came back and started playing again, and really liked it.”
Dog days
Cut to mid-2025, and the game has just released its first paid class, the Artbites. For those less acquainted with the Warhammer 40,000 universe, imagine a police officer who’s accompanied at all times by a fierce cyber dog that can attack enemies on command. The game’s lobby area, the Mourningstar, currently has so many dogs that it’s like a grimdark version of Best In Show.
“We had a few options we were thinking about, but in the end, we really liked the idea of a pet class, so we really wanted to do that,” Magnuson says. “So we found the Arbites and their Cyber-Mastiffs, and thought that would be a super cool addition to the game.”
Allowing the dog to accompany players throughout each level is perhaps the most fun touch about the Arbites class. While Fatshark pondered the idea of “just having [the Cyber Mastiff] as an ability or something like that”, the studio knew taking another tack would have more value to the player.
“We decided to risk a bit and start working on having a constantly present dog. When we got it working, we went, ‘this is 100% what we have to do’.”
Having this additional character in the environment did pose practical challenges for the team.
“It took a while to get there, but now we feel we’re in a good place, and that we’re ready to do something where we charge a little extra”
Victor Magnuson, Fatshark
“It was a scary proposition, right? Will we be able to have this dog running with you at all times, and not getting stuck on stuff? It took a lot of work to make him traverse the environment naturally, avoiding things, and stuff like that.”
Accompanied by a big update that gives the game’s missions a clearer narrative structure, Darktide has reached its highest number of concurrent users on Steam since launch, with over 43,000. Players aren’t totally happy – the game’s pricey cosmetic microtransactions are the subject of numerous negative Steam reviews in recent days – but almost three years of support has undoubtedly made it feel like a more complete experience.
The studio made a conscious decision to wait before charging for DLC, with every major update released up until this point rolled out for free.
“The philosophy for Darktide is that any content that could split the player base, we give away for free. So any mission content, game mode content, or any new weapons and stuff like that we’ll give away for free. But we feel that a player class lives on the side. You don’t have to have it, you can still play with all your friends. So that is something we can charge for, because it’s an addition to the game. It doesn’t split the player base in any way.”
It seems like the studio saw releasing paid DLC as something it had to earn from its community.
“Players are happy, we feel we’ve got the base systems in the right place, the progression is there, it’s fun to play. We’ve got these classes that are deep and have a lot of different play styles in them. It took a while to get there, but now we feel we’re in a good place, and that we’re ready to do something where we charge a little extra.”
The ups and downs of Darktide since launch are not a new phenomenon for Fatshark – Vermintide 2 had a similar course correction in the aftermath of its release. Veteran players have more patience and understanding for the studio’s way of doing things, but newer players were less educated on that front at launch.
“All of our existing player base, when we released Darktide, they knew – ‘it’s going to get better, so don’t worry,'” Magnuson says. “A lot of the new players were saying that it was missing something, but all the old school Vermintide players were like, ‘don’t worry about it, they will fix this, they will add systems and it will get better – just wait’.
“Now, the whole player base has understood how this game will evolve and that there will be new stuff coming and coming, and they’ve also gotten used to the pace of how and when we release stuff. We try as much as possible to keep a three-month cadence, and for major updates, a year. And we’ve also added small events in between so there’s something to play, or something cool happening in the game.”
What’s next
Magnuson says Fatshark will keep working on Darktide as long as there are players, explaining that the studio is “constantly evaluating” whether it still makes sense to support its games. He offers a “minimum two years” timeframe of new content to come for Darktide and points out that after seven years, Vermintide 2 is still being supported by the team. “It’s going to be a long time before we stop working on these games, I think.”
The recent boost in player numbers from the new class no doubt extends that outlook even further for Fatshark.
A key factor behind the game’s stickiness is that the studio doesn’t want Darktide to have total control of its players’ spare time. Even if some parts of the community might treat the game that way, it’s not positioned as a dominant live-service timesink, which is refreshingly level-headed. It leaves plenty of room for players to enjoy other games and drop in casually.
“Our philosophy is that, as long as you come back when we do an update, we’re happy,” Magnuson says. We don’t think it’s possible to have the entire player base playing the game forever, constantly, so as long as they come back, we’re super happy.”
The criteria for Darktide’s ongoing success is simple, then.
“Our goal is to make you not uninstall the game, basically,” he concludes. “If you keep it installed, then we’re happy.”
