From Dark and Darker Wiki
< GEAR SYSTEM DOESN'T WORK IN DARK AND DARKER.
That's rather doubtful. If you'd like, join the wiki discord and share the clips of player gear inspections. We will verify from your information.
In all of our testing a misplacement never happened even once, so perhaps you've misunderstood something about the process?
Keep in mind that if you're loading into trios, it's quite easy meet teams that abuse the gear score averaging system. If your teammates are completely naked, you can wear better gear than would be typical. See the section about averaging for more info on that.