Digital Sun, the Valencia studio behind Moonlighter, has pulled the plug on the open Steam playtest it promised for its next game, ReVamp. Tens of thousands of players signed up through the Steam store page, but the studio now says that handing a pre-release build to that many people is too risky at a time when unreleased games are being reverse-engineered, cloned and put on sale before the real thing ships. The playtest still begins on October 29, but it moves to the studio's Discord server, with access handed out in small waves instead.
What changed, and what didn't
When Digital Sun dated ReVamp at the Triple-i Showcase on October 8, it opened sign-ups for a Steam playtest starting October 29 and told players that joining its Discord would improve their odds of being picked. That plan was already wave-based, but the pool was the Steam request list, and that list grew far larger than a small team can comfortably police.
In a Steam announcement on October 19, the studio said it would instead start with "something more contained" on Discord. The October 29 start date stands. Players who want a shot this year need to join the server and pick up the Playtesting role; invitations will go out in batches as testing moves along. A proper public playtest, open to the wider Steam audience, is now pencilled in for around January.
The launch itself is not affected. Digital Sun was explicit that ReVamp still releases on Steam on March 25, 2027, the date it announced earlier this month.
Why a playtest became a risk
The studio's reasoning is short and pointed. It says it has been worried by recent cases of games being reverse-engineered, cloned and published before the original is even out, and that with launch still months away, putting a build in front of tens of thousands of strangers felt like too big a gamble for ReVamp. It closed the note by asking platforms to keep strengthening protections for original work, so that studios of every size can keep sharing their games early.
That last point is the real tension here. For a small team, an early public playtest is not a courtesy, it is marketing. It is how a game climbs Steam's wishlist and discovery charts, how a community forms months before launch, and how a studio gets thousands of hours of balance feedback it could never generate in-house. Digital Sun says as much in its own announcement: for indie games, showing the game early is how they get seen and find the fans who keep them going. Shrinking the test to a Discord server trades some of that reach for control over who holds a build.
The broader backdrop is a year in which decompilation and automated porting tools have become far more capable, and in which the line between a fan project and a commercial knock-off has blurred. A tower defence game built around clear, readable systems is exactly the kind of design that is easy to copy once someone has the files, which goes some way to explaining why a studio would rather lose a little reach than hand over a build before its art and code are locked.
What ReVamp actually is
Digital Sun calls ReVamp a "Tower Defensevania". You play Dracula, trapped in an endless siege, and the castle is both your home and your weapon. Between waves you add and rearrange rooms, shaping the routes that knights, barbarians and priests have to take to reach your throne, then stock those rooms with minions. Room placement carries rules of its own, with some rooms gaining strength depending on how far below ground or how high above it they sit.
Unlike a classic tower defence game, you do not just watch. Dracula can step into a fight himself, spending abilities to rescue a collapsing defence, and the runs are roguelite in structure: sieges escalate, defeat is expected, and the blood you collect carries forward into permanent upgrades, new rooms and new monsters. The latest trailer, released alongside the date, introduced new minions, a reworked inventory, a constellation map and the Blood Oblation shop.
How to get in
If you signed up on Steam, that request is no longer the route in for the October 29 test. Join Digital Sun's Discord and claim the Playtesting role; the studio says it will announce each new wave on Discord, Reddit and its social channels. Everyone else can wishlist ReVamp on Steam and wait for the public playtest planned for around January, or for the full release on March 25, 2027.
It is a small change to one indie game's schedule, but it is also one of the first times a studio has publicly cited cloning fears as the reason to close an open playtest. If more teams follow, the long-standing habit of throwing early builds open to anyone who asks may start to look very different.
