"Was eager to see how this game turned out, but early access microtransactions locking gameplay?" rightfallen said. "No thanks. massive red flag Dark And Darker Gold ."

"They need to pick one," Captn_Clutch wrote. "$35 is a small game price, buy classes early or grind slowly is like a copy of the LoL free-to-play style. I'm honestly able to accept either method, [but] not both."

But the gameplay grind is also facing criticism for being very slow indeed. Shard requirements appear to scale linearly, meaning you need 25 points for your first shard, 50 points for the second, 75 points for the third, and so forth. That means players need to earn a total of 375 points from extractions in order to unlock a single class, and that's a lot of grinding.

"Assuming you play only regular matches and not solo (2 points per extract), and each round takes you 10 minutes to extract, and you NEVER DIE, it would take you ~30 hours to get 5 shards," sp00kyemperor calculated in a separate thread. "So if you're a god tier player that extracts every single time, it will still take you 30 hours to unlock one class."

And because the requirement scales on a linear basis, the time sink become even bleaker, according to evilomerta: "With a 20% avg survival rate and the avg game lasting 12 minutes for last play test, that means it’ll take the avg player 1,800 games or 360 hours to unlock one class. And that’s just the average. For some it’ll be impossible."

The backlash has been strong enough that Ironmace is in fact giving thought to walking it back. Character classes currently remain available for purchase through the in-game store, but Ironmace CEO Terence Park recently recommended on the Dark and Darker Discord that players not spend money on them, and suggested that refunds will be offered to cheap Darker Gold  those who already have.