The Long Dark — Steam gift

The Long Dark — quiet, brutal survival after a geomagnetic disaster

The Long Dark is a slow, thoughtful first-person survival game set in the frozen Canadian wilderness. After a mysterious geomagnetic event knocks out all electricity, you are left alone against the cold, the blizzards, hunger and the wildlife. There are no zombies and no hordes here — your real enemies are the temperature, exhaustion and your own mistakes. Every choice, from whether to light a fire to whether to cross a ridge before the storm hits, can be your last.

On this The Long Dark page you buy the game as a Steam gift: we order the gift from our supplier and you receive a full copy of the game on your own Steam account. Below you will find what each edition includes, how survival differs from the story, and exactly how the gift is delivered.

What the game is and why it grabs you

The Long Dark is developed and published by Canadian studio Hinterland Studio; the full release landed on August 1, 2017 after a long early access period. It is a survival simulator built around atmosphere and resource management: you watch your warmth, hunger, thirst, fatigue and condition, craft and repair clothing and tools, hunt, ice-fish, scavenge abandoned cabins and gather firewood while it is thirty below outside. The hand-painted, watercolour-like art style is instantly recognizable, and the sound of the wind and cracking ice does more than any horror jump-scare.

The game does not hold your hand: there is no minimap with markers and no pop-ups telling you what to do next. You read the terrain yourself, memorise routes and navigate by the sun and landmarks. Because of that, every trip out feels like a small expedition, and making it back to a warm shelter alive feels like a genuine win.

Two modes: survival sandbox and the WINTERMUTE story

There are two major modes, and the difference matters because it decides which edition you want. Survival Mode is an open-ended sandbox with permadeath: you pick a region and difficulty and simply try to last as long as you can. Freeze to death or get mauled by a bear and the run is over — you start again. This is where the free updates and the paid Tales from the Far Territory expansion, with new regions and mechanics, land.

WINTERMUTE is the episodic story mode following pilot Will Mackenzie and Dr. Astrid Greenwood, separated after a crash. Four complete episodes are available today (well over thirty hours), with a fifth and final episode still in development that will be added for free to owners of the story when it ships. WINTERMUTE gives you written characters, missions and direction, unlike the pure survival sandbox.

How the editions differ in this listing

Two options are sold here, pick by what you are after:

• The Long Dark (full edition) — includes both Survival Mode and the WINTERMUTE story. Get this if you want the endless sandbox and the story, i.e. the whole game.
• The Long Dark: Survival Mode — survival and challenge modes only, no story campaign. Best for people who want the pure survival sandbox. The WINTERMUTE story can be added later as a separate DLC, and your survival progress stays intact.

The Tales from the Far Territory expansion is a separate paid add-on for Survival Mode and is not part of these listings; you buy it on Steam yourself after installing the game if you want it.

How the Steam gift is delivered

Delivery goes through our supplier's bot. You provide your Steam profile friend-invite link and your account region, place the order — and the bot adds itself to your friends, sends the gift and leaves your friends list after delivery. You do not need to accept the friend request manually, and Steam Guard on your account is not required. The gift usually arrives within a couple of minutes of ordering, though that is not a strict timing — sometimes a little longer. You then simply accept the gift in Steam and the game is yours for good.

Account region — why it matters

The key condition for any Steam gift: your Steam account region must match the gift region, otherwise Steam will not let you accept it. And second — the game must not already be in your account's library, since a gift cannot be accepted onto a game you already own. So when ordering, enter your real region and make sure you do not already own The Long Dark. If something does not line up region-wise, message us before paying and we will sort it out.

If you love survival games

The Long Dark is one of the most atmospheric solo survival games, but if the genre pulls you in, check out others too: underwater survival in Subnautica, the forest horror-survival of The Forest, or brutal jungle survival in Green Hell. All three are about resource management and fighting the environment, like The Long Dark, but in completely different settings.

Platforms and compatibility

The game officially runs on Windows, macOS and Linux (including SteamOS), so it works on the Steam Deck. It supports both keyboard-and-mouse and gamepad. You receive the gift for the Steam version, and activation and updates go through Steam as usual.