FromSoftware and Bandai Namco have brought the PC servers for Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin back online. The revival comes after nine months of downtime. All online and PvP features for the game have now been put back in place for PC players, although today’s restoration only applies to the DirectX 11 version of the game. Those playing the DirectX 9 version of the base Dark Souls 2 game will need to wait a bit longer for full online functionality to be back up and running.
In further news, while it’s good news for those playing Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin, FromSoftware has also revealed that it won’t be bringing Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition back to life. The original version of the Dark Souls game is apparently going to be dead as far as online play goes. According to a tweet shared earlier today, this is down to the fact that the game was released in 2012 and therefore its online functionality cannot be restored “due to an aging system.”
The team also confirmed that they’re hard at work restoring online services for the PC version of Dark Souls Remastered, so at least there’s some light at the end of the tunnel for those who own that version of the title. When exactly players can expected to see these services come back to life though is anybody’s guess. Given the length of time it’s taken for the Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 servers to be fixed, it might be at least a few more months yet, but we’ll have to wait and see.
It’s been a bit of a rocky ride for PC players of the Dark Souls games. Earlier this year FromSoftware finally managed to bring the PC servers for Dark Souls 3 back online, after seven months of the game being offline. The game had to be shut down entirely in January after a security issue in the game’s code had meant that players’ PC access was vulnerable to potential external hacks and exploits. After a lot of work, the servers were restored back in August, but it seems that there’s been plenty of additional work going on with the Dark Souls PC servers for the other games in the popular franchise.
Although it’s sad to see the original Dark Souls game end up this way, it’s probably not all that surprising, given that the title is now over a decade old and has an arguably more popular and more playable remaster. Either way, this is a bit of good news for players of Dark Souls 2, many of whom will be able to jump back into their online games after waiting for a whole nine months.
