Even thoughDark Souls 3is one of the most popular action RPGs of the previous console generation, the title is still effectively devoid of its, arguably crucial, multiplayer functionality. After Bandai Namco’sDark Soulsservers went down early in 2022, there was plenty of hubbub surrounding the problems, only for there to be no official solution for close to half a year at this point.
Specifically,Dark Souls 3is currently locked in its offline mode, and players have no way of alleviating these issues as they’re related to the central server that allDark Soulstitles ought to communicate with to facilitate the game’s online functionality. After months of silence, however, Bandai Namco may finally have some concrete solutions in the works, as the game received a new limited-access hotfix earlier today.
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Lance McDonald took to Twitter to let people know that Bandai Namco is slowly pushing out a newDark Souls 3update to Steam users that have pre-existing access to the title’s debug development builds. This is the first update in years, it’s worth pointing out, and it seems likely that this is a sign that Bandai Namco may have a fix forDark Souls' PC multiplayer exploit. While it’s immediately obvious that removing multiplayer functionality fromDark Soulstitles for months at a time was a poor showing, the exploit in question allowed malicious elements to useDSservers to take control over other players' PCs.
Bandai Namco’s issued its last exploit-related announcementback in late May, but it looks like the company hasn’t been twiddling its proverbial thumbs in the interim. Of course, there’s no telling yet what the content of the limited-access hotfix might be at this time. Even if it is a part of Bandai Namco’s testing process, there’s still no way for the community to tell when these files might be more widely accessible, as the testing process may take weeks or months, even.
Of course, while the lack of multiplayer does mean there’s no proper co-op available in the game, players can at least explore theDark Souls 3portion ofthe grandDark Soulsnarrative timelineat their own pace - solo. The vast majority of the game is beatable without resorting to player summoning, anyway, so props to Bandai Namco for keepingDark Soulsgenerally accessible while it’s working on fixing the aforementioned exploit.
Dark Souls 3also has its fair share of fascinating mods, as some may have already heard. The recentConvergence mod forDark Souls 3, for example, effectively retrofits the game into its own sequel, and should help keep players busy until Bandai Namco can deliver its fixes. With a bit of luck, the series' multiplayer functionality should go live in relatively short order.
Dark Souls 3is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
