Three months ago, Bandai Namco shut down the servers of all Dark Souls games on PC. The publisher made this decision to stop a security issue impacting the online multiplayer feature of the games. Over 100 days later, the servers are still offline.
In late January, Bandai Namco announced that the PvP servers for Dark Souls 3, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls: Remastered, and Dark Souls: Prepare To Die were “temporarily deactivated to allow the team to investigate recent reports of an issue with online services.” The hack that caused this shutdown allowed invaders to take control of players’ PC without their permission.
Bandai Namco decided to stop the servers so they could look into this security breach. On February 9, Bandai Namco announced that they “identified the cause and are working on fixing the issue.” The publisher, worried this could impact Elden Ring, “made sure the necessary security measures are in place for this title on all target platforms.”
Three months later, Elden Ring seems perfectly fine. There was no report of the hack on this game, which is breaking records ever since it came out. But things aren’t as bright for the Dark Souls games on PC. The servers are still offline, 106 days after their initial shutdown. Bandai Namco said the servers would come back after Elden Ring’s release, but the game came out on February 25 and the servers are still offline.
Fans begin to worry Dark Souls PC servers may never come back online. That would mean the end of an era, where players could team up to defeat the hardest foes of the game. The tags related to multiplayer are gone from the Steam pages of the games. Some mentions of multiplayer remain in some of the games’ descriptions. But hopes are low as to a comeback of Dark Souls’ multiplayer experience on PC.