Dark Souls 3 has online features reactivated for PC

For FromSoftware fans and avid Dark Souls players, it's been a long time spent in the dark without online features. Ever since an announcement to Twitter on 9 February, 2022, explaining that there had been some technical difficulties experienced with the Dark Souls games on PC, the online functionality for the series has been unavailable.

The same announcement said that online services would not resume on PC until after the launch of Elden Ring. Elden Ring released just over two weeks later on February 25, and until now, online services for the Dark Souls series on PC has still not been restored. Simply put, it's been a significant amount of waiting for fans of the series.

This was in fact due to a Dark Souls exploit that could allow hackers to use remote code execution (RCE) maliciously and even take over another players PC. In a statement to VGC, one player who had discovered the exploit actually shared the details of it to Github and with the developer, but they also stated that little to nothing was done regarding this information until they publicly demonstrated the exploit on Twitch. As a result, the Dark Souls servers then went offline while the developer found a fix for the issues.

Fans now can rejoice a little. Taking to Twitter once more, FromSoftware has announced that online features have now been reactivated on PC for Dark Souls 3.

As it stands, it appears that the developer is also currently trying to restore online services for the other Dark Souls titles too. Typically, there's no clear answer as to how much longer players could be waiting for these, but it's nice to know that online features will be returning to the other games in the series, sooner or later.

As ever, helping out other players or fooling around in PvP is often what makes these games live on indefinitely. Even the likes of blood stains, phantoms, and messages are a much-loved feature of online play that doesn't necessarily mean meeting up with other players. So, it's certainly pleasant to see the features finally make a return.

Are you glad to see online services restored in Dark Souls 3, or are you still trying to finish off Elden Ring? Let us know!