FromSoftware has shut down the game servers for Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III on every platform after finding a problem with them, and has not said when they will return.
The studio's player support account announced the shutdown on X (formerly Twitter) on October 30th at 1:45 AM PT. "Due to a server issue, the game servers for the following titles will be temporarily unavailable on all platforms," the post read. "We will provide updates once we have information regarding the server restoration time."
A Japanese-language notice went up on the same account at 12:01 AM PT, about an hour and 45 minutes earlier. It said FromSoftware was stopping the servers on all platforms because it had found a fault in the game servers, and that it would announce a separate update once the restoration time was known. Neither post explained what the fault was, and the studio apologised for the inconvenience in both.
Not the first Dark Souls shutdown
The series' servers have gone dark before. On January 23rd 2022, the official Dark Souls account said PvP (player versus player) servers for Dark Souls III, Dark Souls II and Dark Souls: Remastered had been "temporarily deactivated to allow the team to investigate recent reports of an issue with online services." That shutdown only hit the PC versions, and the account said console PvP servers on Xbox and PlayStation were not affected.
Getting everything back took most of the year. Online features for the PC version of Dark Souls III returned on August 25th 2022, and Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin followed on October 25th 2022. On that same day, the account said online services for the 2012 PC release of Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition would not come back "due to an aging system." Dark Souls: Remastered on PC was reactivated on November 9th 2022.
Unlike the 2022 shutdown, this one covers console players as well as PC. FromSoftware has said it will post updates on the restoration time through its player support account.
