Dark Souls II and III servers go offline on every platform, with no return date

FromSoftware took the online servers for Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III offline on every platform on October 30. Its player support account on X called them "temporarily unavailable" due to a server issue and promised updates once there’s a restoration time. A Japanese notice posted shortly before mentioned a fault found in the game servers. Neither explained what the fault is.

What stops working

Everything online: invasions, co-op summons, ground messages and bloodstains. Those layers are part of the series’ identity, and Dark Souls without them is a lonelier game. The offline campaign still works.

Why it’s worrying

This has happened before. On January 23, 2022, FromSoftware shut down PvP for Dark Souls III, Dark Souls II and Dark Souls: Remastered on PC to investigate a problem, which turned out to be a severe exploit that allowed code execution on other players’ machines. The return was slow: Dark Souls III came back on August 25, 2022, Scholar of the First Sin on October 25 and Remastered on November 9. The 2012 Prepare to Die Edition never returned.

The difference now is that consoles went down too. There’s no confirmation the cause is similar, and it’s worth not jumping to that conclusion ahead of FromSoftware.

What I’d do: if you play on PC, stay offline until there’s an explanation. It’s the same advice as in 2022 and costs nothing. And FromSoftware owes players more than "a server issue." Anyone who sat through a seven-month wait last time has reason to ask.