Update: Humanity restored—multiplayer is alive once more, without a word of explanation.
Original: While in Dark Souls 3 there are so many summon signs that it's hard to tell one from another, in Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition an abyssal silence has fallen. Multiplayer has been offline since April 13—the day after Dark Souls 3 released—with no word from Bandai or From Software as to what's going on.
The problem extends to all multiplayer functionality: invasions, cooperation and even messages between worlds. Despite two sequels, Dark Souls still has a bustling community and the long silence is driving them mad.
The outage corresponds with a modification made to Dark Souls' Steam config files. Some players are speculating that it's to free up resources for Dark Souls 3 multiplayer, others suspect a conspiracy to drive more players to the new release, but Bandai Namco is silent on the issue. The only official acknowledgement comes via community manager J. Kartje, but that was five days ago.
