After 9 whole months, Dark Souls Remastered is finally online again

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(Image credit: From Software)

Praise the sun, for the entire Dark Souls trilogy is finally back online. Over nine months after being deactivated, FromSoftware has at long last re-enabled online features for Dark Souls Remastered.

The game, along with Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3, had its PvP servers shut down on PC back in January. This was thanks to a serious security vulnerability that was discovered for Dark Souls 3, which allowed some pretty malicious code to be run through its online functionality. It took an entire four months to hear any further news when FromSoftware finally announced that the servers would be returning "progressively," starting with the third game in the trilogy.

Three months after that, Dark Souls 3 was finally back. At the time, FromSoftware said it was working "to restore these features for all other Dark Souls titles." Unfortunately, when Dark Souls 2 was resurrected in October, the developer revealed that one original Dark Souls game would get left behind. Prepare to Die Edition was found to have "an aging system" supporting its online features and was promptly nixed from FromSoftware's to-do list. 

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That just left Dark Souls: Remastered, completing the developer's nine-month-long journey to squash the security vulnerability and bring the game back. FromSoftware kept its final triumph very brief, tweeting: "Thank you once again for your patience, understanding, and support."

It's wild that it's taken almost the entirety of 2022 to restore three of the four games deactivated. But at least Dark Souls players are now free to invade, summon and slap together some cheeky (and occasionally massively unhelpful) messages to bamboozle and amuse fellow players in whichever game they like. Except for PtDE, sorry.

Mollie Taylor
Features Producer

Mollie spent her early childhood deeply invested in games like Killer Instinct, Toontown and Audition Online, which continue to form the pillars of her personality today. She joined PC Gamer in 2020 as a news writer and now lends her expertise to write a wealth of features, guides and reviews with a dash of chaos. She can often be found causing mischief in Final Fantasy 14, using those experiences to write neat things about her favourite MMO. When she's not staring at her bunny girl she can be found sweating out rhythm games, pretending to be good at fighting games or spending far too much money at her local arcade.