Dark Souls PC Servers Shut Down due to Hacking Fears

Colin Thierry Colin Thierry

The action role-playing game Dark Souls 3 has taken its player-v-player (PvP) servers offline following multiple reports of an exploit that could allow hackers to take control of your PC, according to a tweet on Monday from the official Dark Souls 3 Twitter account.

Along with Dark Souls 3, publisher Bandai Namco and developer FromSoftware have also turned off PvP servers for Darks Souls 2 and Dark Souls: Remastered.

However, this exploit does not impact console gamers, so Dark Souls PvP servers are still available on both PlayStation and Xbox.

Dark Souls 3 was released in 2016 to much praise from fans and critics alike, and it remains one of the top 100 most-played games on PC by active users, according to game-distribution service Steam.

Gamers are still able to play Dark Souls 3 without PvP.

The tweet from the official Dark Souls 3 Twitter account said that the servers had been “temporarily deactivated to allow the team to investigate recent reports of an issue with online services. … We apologize for this inconvenience.”

While the exact reason for the servers being taken down was not given, this move follows a series of reports about a serious vulnerability found in the game’s code that could allow a threat actor to run programs remotely on your PC.

The exploit first came to light when it was used to interrupt Twitch streamer The_Grim_Sleeper’s Dark Souls 3 stream. The hacker crashed the streamer’s game and began running a text-to-speech program that criticized his gameplay.

The_Grim_Sleeper then reported that Microsoft PowerShell, a program used to run code on a computer, had then opened by itself in place of the game. This was a sign that the hacker used the program in order to run a script that triggered the text-to-speech feature.

Bandai Namco and FromSoftware have not said when the PvP servers will go back online.

About the Author

About the Author

Colin Thierry is a former cybersecurity researcher and journalist for SafetyDetectives who has written a wide variety of content for the web over the past 2 years. In his free time, he enjoys spending time outdoors, traveling, watching sports, and playing video games.