Are the Dark Souls servers online? Answered

Ever since the release of Demon’s Souls in 2009, players have been running the gauntlet of “gitting gud” in the Souls series, dashing and rolling around enemies and finding ingenious ways to take out the games’ towering bosses. A core element of the Souls series has always been the multiplayer, but that’s not much use if the servers aren’t up any more. So are the Dark Souls servers still online?

Why have the Dark Souls servers been offline?

At the beginning of 2022, a serious security issue was discovered in Dark Souls 3 that led to Bandai Namco shuttering the servers for Dark Souls, Dark Souls Remastered, Dark Souls 2, and Dark Souls 3 while they tried to patch up the problem. Players hoped it would be a quick fix, but what the release of a certain little game called Elden Ring in February, the Dark Souls servers seemed to slip further and further down the priority list.

When the games were officially listed as “single-player only” on Steam in April, fans feared it was all over, and that the PC multiplayer servers were down for good. Even when Redditor Relevant-Heart-1751 posted a message allegedly from the Bandai Namco support team in May, claiming the server issues were being actively worked on, many couldn’t quite believe it.

Are the Dark Souls servers coming back online?

However, that claim has now been corroborated by the folks over at PC Gamer, who got official email confirmation from a FromSoftware representative that yes, the Dark Souls servers are being fixed up and will be going back online at some point. “We plan to restore online service for each game progressively, bringing back servers for Dark Souls 3 once we complete the necessary work to correct the problem,” the email reads, suggesting that the team will reopen the Dark Souls 3 servers first before working back to the earlier games.

At present there’s no precise timeline for when the servers will be restored, but From promised “additional updates as soon as the restoration schedule is finalized,” and thanked fans for their patience. In the meantime, though, there’s at least plenty of multiplayer shenanigans to be had in Elden Ring, the latest entry in FromSoftware’s esteemed catalog.