Apparently, the game's incorporated Tavern anticheat crawls all over your PC and sends a copy of everything on it every time you run the game. Won't allow you to run the game if it finds software it doesn't like. And may be hard to fully remove afterwards.

Goes without saying it isn't DRM free. I was not too fond of today's giveaway.

Today's EGS freebie is a "premium" account upgrade for an early access, free-to-play MMO. Be warned that it uses an obscure, proprietary and ultra intrusive anti-cheat software ("Tavern Worker" / tavern.exe) and potential spyware*. That's a lot of red flags in one neat package.

(* There are reports on reddit that the software crawls *all* attached drives. To prevent that, users suggest using VMs, restricting user rights, dual booting or even disk encryption. ... WTF?)

Steam game description:

Yes, it's a dungeon crawler PVP that is also F2P in first person perspective.
Entirely online.

The free paid dlc today acts as an upgrade to give players access to exclusive grinding areas
Opens the market for trading with players (a key feature that should be included without a $30 paywall)
And expands their character slots.
Without it, the player only has one character slot. A one man team without any ability to trade or buy from other players,
Don't forget, this is an online game....and you're not allowed to trade with others until you pay $30!
With so many key features behind a paywall, That's not how dungeon crawlers should work...

I'm not a fan of developers that release watered-down versions of their game or remove important parts of the game
With intent to charge people later in the form of expansions, DLCs or in-app purchases.
It's better to assign a price tag upfront than to slice the full experience into pieces for money.
It's not a honest business model.
I know it's free today, but I'm not fond of their usual practices.

Not to mention, the game is not only DRMed, it has one of the worst anti-cheat software.

I guess we shouldn't be surprised because the title is Dark and Darker.
You have a dark business model only to find darker things creeping in your computer after installing the game.
Dark and Darker my friends.

Many thanks for this heads up. I usually claim all freebies I see unless they're games I take moral issues with (which isn't very often), but it seems like I will be passing this one up. I'm hardcore opposed to kernel anticheat and any other highly intrusive anticheat, and that's just outright unacceptable, so I will not be claiming this one. Devs using anticheat like that can suck a lemon.

Thanks again.

Doodle Devil and Santa Rockstar are free on IndieGala.