FromSoftware is having a week to forget — and Dark Souls players are the ones paying for it. Hot on the heels of delaying The Duskbloods into 2027, the studio has now announced that the servers for Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 are going down on all platforms — and it isn’t going to tell you when they’ll be back.
The Official Announcement
“Due to a server issue, the game servers for the following titles will be temporarily unavailable on all platforms,” FromSoftware wrote in a post on X on October 30, listing Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3. The studio added: “We will provide updates once we have information regarding the server restoration time. We apologize for the inconvenience.” That is the entire explanation — no word on what the issue actually is, and no estimate for when online play might return. As GamesRadar points out, roughly eight hours after the announcement there was still no update, and it’s that missing timeline that makes this feel less like routine maintenance and more like the lights going out in Lordran.
What Players Are Losing
Until the servers return, the games’ beloved (and occasionally treacherous) online features are all unavailable: PvP invasions, co-op summon signs, and the messages other players leave on the ground — the ones that either save your run or confidently trick you off a cliff. Dark Souls 2 remains playable on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, and Dark Souls 3 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One — but for now, both are strictly single-player affairs.
Fans Have Seen This Movie Before
The reason players are nervous is history. Back in 2022, after a security vulnerability was discovered affecting Dark Souls 3, servers for all three Dark Souls games were taken offline — and per GamesRadar’s recap, the PC servers for Dark Souls Remastered, Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 stayed dark for most of the year before they were eventually restored, with co-op and invasions completely dead in the meantime. This time around, the outage spans every platform rather than just PC, which is exactly why GamesRadar hopes there’s no repeat of 2022 in store.
The Curious Timing
FromSoftware hasn’t said what the server issue is, but the timing is hard to ignore. The shutdown comes about a week after a wave of newly discovered PHP vulnerabilities temporarily knocked a string of sites and online services offline — the same wave that locked Final Fantasy 14’s servers for nearly 24 hours. Whether that’s played a role here simply isn’t known; GamesRadar also notes that a separate server maintenance for Dark Souls 2 only just came and went a couple of days ago. Either way, it caps a brutal stretch for a studio whose next game just slipped into next year — so stock up on Estus Flasks, keep your shield up, and maybe hold on to those offline saves.