Now Bandai Namco says it's 'actively working' on fixing the PC Souls games

(Image credit: Bandai Namco / FromSoftware)

Last week we reported on the slightly unusual situation that's developed with the Dark Souls games on PC. Essentially, the games have been offline since January, when a major exploit was made public, and this was swiftly followed by the release of developer FromSoft's Elden Ring—by any metric, the biggest title of the year so far.

While it's understandable that the developer's attention has been elsewhere, this now means that the Souls games, one of the best and most influential series of the last decade, haven't been working properly on PC for about four months. In the course of writing the above article PCG contacted publisher Bandai Namco multiple times, and didn't get a response.

The concern about when and indeed if the servers were ever coming back has been growing. Now, someone at Bandai Namco support has delivered the message Souls fans want to hear. Redditor Relevant_Heart_1751 contacted the publisher to ask when they'd be able to play their games again, and received the following response:

bandai_namco_confirmed_the_servers_will_be_back from r/darksouls3

"I'm getting back to you in regards to your inquiry if the Dark Souls servers for the PC will be back online.

"I'm happy to confirm that the developers are actively working on resolving the issue in question and re-launching the Dark Souls servers for PC as soon as possible. For the moment, we do not have an estimate of when this is expected to happen."

Well that wasn't so hard, was it. It nevertheless remains mystifying why the developer and publisher have been so quiet about this issue, which has been dragging on for way too long. Elden Ring's success makes it understandable that FromSoft's initial priority was to support that very popular, very new title as it greeted millions of players. But the games that made Elden Ring possible deserve a little better than being left on the step and ignored.

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Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."