FromSoftware pulls Dark Souls 2 and 3 servers offline on every platform

What changed: FromSoftware has taken the game servers for Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 offline on every platform, citing a server fault it has not described. The studio’s player support account announced it on Friday, October 30, and said it would post updates once it knows when service will return.¹

The wording of the English post calls the outage “temporary”, and a Japanese notice posted about an hour and 45 minutes earlier made the same promise of a separate update once a restoration time is known.² GamesRadar’s headline frames it as an indefinite shutdown instead.¹ Both descriptions fit the facts on the table: the servers are down, and nobody has put a date on their return. I would read “temporary” as the studio’s intent and “indefinite” as the reality of having no timetable. Neither post explains what broke.²

What you lose if you own these games: the online layer. That means player phantoms, messages, co-op summons, and PvP invasions and arenas.³ Offline play is untouched, and saves are safe, since neither game uses cloud saves in the first place.³ A few titles are not affected: the first Dark Souls (only its Remastered version is still online), Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring and Elden Ring Nightreign.³

The platform scope is the notable part. When the series went dark in January 2022, the PvP shutdown hit only the PC versions, and the official account said Xbox and PlayStation consoles were not affected.⁴⁵ This time console players are in the penalty box too.²

That 2022 outage is the reference point nobody can ignore. It was reportedly driven by a remote code execution exploit that could let a hacker take control of a player’s PC, though the publisher never confirmed that link at the time.⁴ Getting everything back took most of the year: Dark Souls 3 on PC returned August 25, Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin followed October 25, and Remastered came back November 9. The 2012 PC release of Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition never got its online services back, due to what the account called an aging system.² Nothing in today’s announcement says this fault is related to 2022, so treat any comparison as a worry, not a finding.

What it costs you: for now, nothing but the multiplayer. Your characters and offline runs are intact, and the studio says updates are coming through its player support account.²

Our read: Standings check: FromSoftware takes a loss on uptime today, but it scores a small point for telling players quickly and promising updates, which beats a silent blackout. The real test comes at the final whistle, when we learn how long this actually lasts. If 2022 taught us anything, it is that “temporary” can stretch a long time, so I would not schedule any invasions just yet.

Footnotes

1. GamesRadar, “Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 are shutting down servers indefinitely, FromSoftware says”. Retrieved October 30, 2026. ↩ ↩²

2. Inven Global, “FromSoftware takes Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III servers offline on all platforms”. Retrieved October 30, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

3. PC Games, “From Software nimmt zwei Dark-Souls-Spiele temporär offline”. Retrieved October 30, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Kotaku, “Dark Souls Servers Down Due To Exploit That Could Give Someone Control Of Your PC”. Retrieved October 30, 2026. ↩ ↩²

5. IGN, “Dark Souls Series PvP Servers Are Down on PC Following the Discovery of a ‘Serious Exploit’”. Retrieved October 30, 2026. ↩