It was just a few days ago that Bandai Namco had announced that it was taking all of the Dark Souls PC servers offline. When I say all, I mean all. Dark Souls Prepare to Die, Dark Souls Remastered, Dark Souls II, Dark Souls II: Sins of the First Scholar, and Dark Souls III. Sadly, the servers are still offline as of today.
This was prompted by a nasty RCE (remote code execution) exploit that had the potential of ruining Dark Souls players save files, allowing an attacker to run remote applications on the victims PC, potentially able to capture logins and cause some severe damage to the attacked PC. This exploit was made possible due to the currently in place netcode that is in use for the current Dark Souls games.
Needless to say that Bandai Namco and Fromsoftware had no choice but to take the Dark Souls PC servers offline. Currently the companies are working on a way to nullify this exploit, so that all Dark Souls PC players can get back to enjoying the game. This took place on January 23, 2022, nearly two days ago, however, the status of servers is still unknown.
This exploit has only affected the PC versions of Dark Souls. The console versions are still playable online.
PvP servers for Dark Souls 3, Dark Souls 2, and Dark Souls: Remastered have been temporarily deactivated to allow the team to investigate recent reports of an issue with online services.
Servers for Dark Souls: PtDE will join them shortly.We apologize for this inconvenience.
— Dark Souls (@DarkSoulsGame) January 23, 2022
More importantly, as this exploit has been reported that it also could affect Elden Ring. As you can imagine, for this sort of exploit to occur in one of the biggest and most anticipated apted games of the year, would be disastrous. This is also why the Dark Souls PC servers were taken offline. As there has been little to no changes to the netcode between the current Dark Souls releases.We’ve reached out to Bandai Namco to find out if there is any ETA of when the servers will come back online. However, we have yet to receive a reply. In the meanwhile, it would seem that the best way to stay updated is to follow the Dark Souls Twitter account.
I know it’s been a rough time for my fellow PC Dark Souls players. Especially we can’t join in on any jolly co-op or murderous PVP antics. We can only hope that the servers come back online soon. Otherwise, I know a few players would just mind end up hollowing away.