Bandai Namco Now Investigating Elden Ring After ‘Serious Exploit’, Dark Souls PC Servers Stay Offline

Bandai Namco has made an official announcement recognising the current technical difficulties with the Dark Souls games on PC, and has said that it is now looking into Elden Ring ahead of launch to ensure the problem does not affect the new FromSoftware game.

In a statement on Twitter, Bandai Namco and FromSoftware said that they are “aware of the technical difficulties players have experienced with the Dark Souls suite of games on PC”, referring to the fact that servers are down after a “serious exploit” was discovered.

#DarkSouls pic.twitter.com/ZRhX9OcvQe

— Dark Souls (@DarkSoulsGame) February 9, 2022

The companies offered their thanks to fans who have reported the issue. “Thanks to you, we have identified the cause and are working on fixing the issue.”

“In addition, we have extended the investigation to Elden Ring – our upcoming title launching on February 25th – and have made sure the necessary security measures are in place for this title on all target platforms,” the statement reads.

This suggests that Elden Ring’s online features should be available on PC when it launches later this month. However, the situation has meant that severs for Dark Souls will not be returning until later. “Due to the time required to set up proper testing environments, online services for the Dark Souls series on PC will not resume until after the release of Elden Ring,” says the statement.

“We will continue to do everything we can to bring back these services as soon as possible,” it continues. “We will make an announcement as soon as the schedule is determined for resuming online services.”

The issue affecting FromSoftware games on PC was discovered last month, with Reddit users claiming a RCE (Remote Code Execution) exploit had been discovered that could let hackers “run arbitrary code on your machine without permission.” The users who discovered the exploit noted that it could affect Elden Ring, but thankfully FromSoft’s work on the issue seems to mean that Elden Ring will launch on PC without problems.

For more from Elden Ring, check out our hands-on preview and details on the game’s multiplayer. Director Hidetaka Miyazaki has also said meeting George R.R. Martin to discuss Elden Ring was “like speaking with an old friend”, but thinks Martin would be “shocked” at what he’s done to his characters.

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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.