Dark Souls dev apologises for seven-month outage as PC servers come back online

Dark Souls
(Image credit: FromSoftware)

As Dark Souls 3 PC servers come back online after more than 200 days of downtime, a senior FromSoftware developer has apologised for the lengthy outage.

Earlier today, FromSoftware and Dark Souls publisher Bandai Namco announced that the multiplayer features for the PC version of Dark Souls 3 are now back online, having been taken down back in January. PC players of the final game in the Dark Souls trilogy will now be able to invade other worlds, see messages from other players, and be invaded by others in turn.

In his own tweet, long-standing FromSoftware employee Yasuhiro Kitao said that the developer was "sorry to have kept you waiting for so long," and asked players to "please accept our humble appreciation for those still waiting as we work to restore servers for other games in the series."

FromSoftware also confirmed that it's hard at work restoring the online functions of Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 for PC players. There's no time frame yet for the PC servers for both games to be back up and running, but it's good news nonetheless to know a fix is on the way.

In January of this year, PC servers for all three Dark Souls games were turned off with immediate effect. According to FromSoftware at the time, this was so the development team could investigate "recent reports of an issue with online services," which saw some players' PCs left open to hacking.

Shortly before the PC servers were taken offline, rumours were doing the rounds among the Dark Souls community. Some claimed that hackers were using the game to run code on other players' PCs, effectively taking over their machines through in-game exploits. 

In fact, one hacker even tried raising awareness of the issue, hoping that FromSoftware would take notice and fix the exploit. Over half a year later, PC servers for only one Dark Souls game have returned, so it seems FromSoftware is really putting time into fixing the issue for good. 

Elsewhere in FromSoftware news, rumours of an Armored Core game still haven't borne any fruit. 

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Hirun Cryer

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.

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