Dark Souls Servers Pulled Offline After Hackers Find Major Exploit

PC Gamer reports that online PvP servers for three Dark Souls series titles - Dark Souls Remastered, Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 - have been temporarily shut down by publisher Bandai Namco due to “an issue with online services,” to quote the official Dark Souls twitter.

This suspension applied to PC players only, with the official account adding that “this downtime does not affect PvP servers for Xbox or PlayStation consoles.” It transpired that a security vulnerability in Dark Souls 3 was allowing nefarious sorts to run malware in the servers, which posed a significant risk to anyone else using them. 

Check out the evolution of the Soulsborne games, right up to 2022’s Elden Ring, in our video below

To refer to PC Gamer’s reporting on the issue - as this is outside of my console peasant wheelhouse - this hack was discovered and users were advised to use the Blue Sentinel mod to avoid suffering any nastiness. Bandai Namco were contacted, who then took the measure of taking the PVP servers offline until the issue was fully resolved.

Twitter user @Skelemann alerted players to the vulnerability with a to-the-point post: “Hey folks. On PC there is a new, very serious exploit plaguing Dark Souls 3 which can cause lasting damage to your computer. This could brick your PC, let your login information be shared, or execute programs in the background.”

They subsequently added: “It's highly suggested to NOT PLAY ONLINE DARK SOULS 3 in it's (sic) current state. Avoid any online activity from Ds3.” Duly noted, cheers Skele.

Dark Souls developers FromSoftware will release their new game, Elden Ring, on 25 February 2022. We’re very excited about this all-new open-world adventure, created in collaboration with Games of Thrones mastermind George R.R. Martin - and what’s more, we’ve already played it. Well, a bit of it. You can read our impressions right here.