Dark Souls Servers Will Be Offline Until Elden Ring Launches

Time to rest on the bonfire for a while.

Bandai Namco Entertainment has made an official announcement in regards to the servers of Dark Souls.

According to the announcement posted on the official Twitter account of the game, Bandai Namco has decided for all games of the series to be kept offline for now until Elden Ring gets released. It was revealed a security flaw was discovered by their team, which could result in hackers taking over another computer via remote code execution. They did not want that to happen so it was better to keep it offline for now.

Dark Souls and Sekiro modder LukeYui was one of the people who discovered the exploit and told Bandai Namco. He found out upcoming game Elden Ring uses the same netcode, which could have the same problems when it launches.

FromSoftware has now discovered the cause and is working on a fix to make this vulnerability go away.

Check out the full message from Bandai Namco and FromSoftware:

Bandai Namco Entertainment and FromSoftware are aware of the technical difficulties players have experienced with the Dark Souls suite of games on PC.

We want to thank the entire Dark Souls community and the players who have reached out to us directly to voice their concerns and offer solutions. Thanks to you, we have identified the cause and are working on fixing the issue.

In addition, we have extended the investigation to Elden Ring — our upcoming title launching on February 25th — and have made sure the necessary security measures are in place for this title on all target platforms.

Due to the time required to set up proper testing environments, online services for the Dark Souls series on PC will not resume until after the release of Elden Ring. We will continue to do everything we can to bring back these services as soon as possible.

We will make an announcement as soon as the schedule is determined for resuming online services. Please stay tuned to the Dark Souls social media channels for updates.

Once again, please allow us to share our thanks to you, our passionate community.

Elden Ring will launch on February 25, 2022 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The whole Dark Souls series is now playable on PC, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PS4.

Former News Editor