Funny enough, I was in the middle of writing a piece about just what the heck is going on with the PC Dark Souls servers. Then I saw this reply from Bandai Namco regarding the state of the games, and it’s not what we wanted. And that’s being blunt. The company has stated that they’re still working on a fix, but until that fix is implemented, the PC Dark Souls servers will remain offline. They’ll stay that way until Elden Ring is released, and even then, we don’t know when they’ll come back online.
#DarkSouls pic.twitter.com/ZRhX9OcvQe
— Dark Souls (@DarkSoulsGame) February 9, 2022
For those not familiar with what’s going on, a rather nasty exploit, the RCE exploit, was discovered that could affect all of the PC Dark Souls games. This exploit would give the attacker control over the victim’s PC, allowing them to do all sorts of terrible things, including the ability to completely brick the victim’s PC. This exploit apparently would also affect Elden Ring, which is why I feel that Bandai Namco has leaped into action. Since then, it’s been two weeks since the servers have been offline. Mind you, this exploit has not affected the console versions of the games.
So basically, the Dark Souls PC community is still in a bad place, and it will remain that way until AFTER Elden Ring is released. And even then, there’s no ETA on when the Dark Souls servers will be back. That’s really both depressing and frustrating that millions of players are being penalized, all thanks to Bandai Namco’s and Fromsoftware’s negligence. If these companies had been paying attention to the number of exploits plaguing the games for years, we likely wouldn’t be in this place. Rather, they were content on issuing soft-bans and penalizing innocent players, while the ones causing the chaos ran rampant on the platform for years.
Yet, here we are, and it sucks I can’t get back online for any co-operation or PVP fun in ANY of the Dark Souls games for PC. Oh well, at least Elden Ring isn’t being delayed or pushed back. Meaning, they must be close if they’re confident that the game won’t be affected. Still, I think I’ll be playing Elden Ring on the PS5 or Xbox Series X … just like I have switched to the console versions of the Dark Souls games. Since those are the only way currently to play the games as they were intended.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m glad that this is being addressed, but damn if they had listened when this exploit was first announced, we’d likely be in a better situation. And didn’t the Blue Sentinel anti-cheat tool for Dark Souls 3 get updated to protect against this within a matter of days? What exactly is going on?
Oh well, at least something is being done. The wait continues, and I’m sure that I can say that the community isn’t too thrilled.
