Dark Souls multiplayer servers taken offline due to major exploit

Over the weekend, Bandai Namco and From Software announced that all the servers for Dark Souls Remastered, 2, and 3 were temporarily shut down because of an “issue with online services.” While the publisher didn’t share more details, the bug is believed to grant Remote Code Execution privileges through the Souls’ series multiplayer invasion system, which could allow an attacker to take control of another player’s PC.

News of this issue first broke on the Elden Ring subreddit, where the RCE exploit was revealed publicly. An RCE bug allows an attacker to run code on another machine remotely, essentially giving them full control. While the news broke on the Elden Ring subreddit, since Elden Ring is not out yet, there is time for the bug to be fixed before launch next month. However, since the bug is also present in the Dark Souls trilogy on PC, the servers for those games have been taken offline for the time being.

This bug only impacts the PC versions of the games, so this doesn’t impact the console versions of the Dark Souls games. If the bug is present in Elden Ring, then it should be fixed in time for launch on the 25th of February, but if not, we could see a situation where multiplayer features are disabled for the PC version at launch.

From Software has publicly acknowledged the issue and is actively working on a fix but there is no time frame yet. Hopefully the developers will have an update for us later this week.

KitGuru Says: Given the severity of this bug, it makes sense to take servers offline for an immediate fix. The timing is unfortunate though, as this may take resources away from Elden Ring during the final stretch of bug fixing. 

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