In a post submitted to the Dark Souls 3 subreddit, user Relevant-Heart-1751 shared a response they received from Bandai Namco after contacting the publisher’s support team and inquiring about the state of the Dark Souls servers. The response, while pleasant, is fairly vague, and, though it does state that the development team is actively working to fix the issue, they don’t offer any kind of ETA, nor do they hint at how much progress has been made over the past few months.
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The servers were initially shut down in late January 2022 after a major issue with the PC version of Dark Souls 3 was discovered that would essentially allow those with adequate know-how to run software on, steal information from, and even potentially brick the hardware of players encountered online. Obviously, that’s a legitimate reason to temporarily pull online support, and, once it was discovered that these issues could be replicated in the first two Dark Souls games, online connectivity for the entire trilogy was retracted.
While it’s good to know that Bandai Namco and FromSoftware jumped into action before the problem could cause any kind of significant damage, some fans are eagerly awaiting the return of the Dark Souls games’ multiplayer functionality. As pointed out by Tom4461, a respondent to Relevant-Heart-1751’s post, Elden Ring has instigated among new FromSoftware fans a surge of interest in the older games, but many are neglecting to try them until their online functionalities are restored. As hilarious and heartening as it can be to see new Dark Souls players fall into the older games’ pitfalls, it’s a pity experienced players can’t be summoned for assistance.
This isn’t to say that there’s no more fun to be had with Elden Ring. Most players take about fifty hours to beat Elden Ring on a first playthrough, and that’s ignoring dozens upon dozens of hours of optional content. The game will certainly hold fans’ attention for quite some time, but it would be nice to have a clearer idea of when the Dark Souls games will once again be playable online on PC.
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