Status (30 October 2026, 19:00 IST): Online servers for Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III remain offline on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. FromSoftware has not given a cause or a restoration date. This article will be updated as the situation changes.
FromSoftware shut down the online servers for Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III across every platform on 30 October 2026. The studio said it had found an issue with the game servers but gave no further explanation. In a post on its FromSoftware Player Support account, it said it would issue a separate announcement “as soon as the recovery timeline is determined,” which means there is currently no return date.
The shutdown disables co-op summoning, PvP invasions, and the asynchronous features that define the series, such as player messages and bloodstains. Both games’ single-player campaigns can still be played offline. About two hours after the first notice, FromSoftware posted a follow-up repeating that the servers would be temporarily unavailable on all platforms and that it would update players once it knew when service would be restored.
Japanese outlet AUTOMATON reported that players had been complaining about server problems on social media before the announcement went out. According to TheGamer, the shutdown came only two days after FromSoftware finished scheduled maintenance on the Dark Souls II servers.
The notice names only those two games. FromSoftware has not said whether Elden Ring, Elden Ring Nightreign, Sekiro, Armored Core VI, or Dark Souls Remastered are affected, and the company has not asked players to take any action.
Outage Timeline
- 28 October 2026: Scheduled Dark Souls II server maintenance completed, per TheGamer.
- 30 October 2026, approx. 13:00 IST (07:30 UTC): FromSoftware Player Support announces that Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III servers are being taken down on all platforms.
- 30 October 2026, approx. 15:00 IST (09:30 UTC): Follow-up post says servers are temporarily unavailable and promises an update once a restoration time is known.
- 30 October 2026, 19:00 IST: Servers still offline. No cause or return date announced.
Is PHP2Shell Behind The Shutdown?
FromSoftware has not linked the outage to any vulnerability, and nothing public shows what software its game servers run. The timing has still drawn attention. The shutdown comes nine days after the PHP project released emergency patches for PHP2Shell on 21 October. PHP2Shell is a pair of memory-safety flaws, tracked as CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, that allow unauthenticated remote code execution in PHP versions 5.4 through 8.5. Remote code execution means an attacker can run their own commands on a server without logging in.
Several Japanese game operators took services offline in the days after disclosure. Pokémon HOME, Pokémon Champions, and Pokémon Sleep went into emergency maintenance on 21 October and returned the next day. Dexerto also listed Umamusume: Pretty Derby, Granblue Fantasy, and Princess Connect! Re:Dive among the services that issued maintenance notices. The Pokémon Company’s notices did not name PHP either. In FromSoftware’s case, the PHP connection remains speculation from players and outlets, not something the company has stated.
Why The 2022 Shutdown Still Worries Players
Dark Souls fans have been through this before. On 23 January 2022, Bandai Namco and FromSoftware suspended PC servers for the Dark Souls trilogy after players found a remote code execution exploit in Dark Souls III’s online mode. The exploit let attackers run code on other players’ PCs. Dark Souls III’s PC servers did not return until 25 August 2022, 214 days later. Dark Souls II followed after 275 days, and Dark Souls Remastered after 290. The original Prepare to Die Edition never got its online features back.
The 2022 incident only affected PC players, and console servers stayed up. This time, FromSoftware has pulled every platform at once, which AUTOMATON noted makes this a larger shutdown than the one four years ago.
Reaction on X has mixed frustration with gallows humour. One player summed up the studio’s terse notice: “FromSoftware pulled the servers and explained nothing.” Others said they hoped for a quick fix rather than another months-long wait.
Several questions remain open: what the issue is, whether it puts player accounts or devices at risk, whether other FromSoftware titles share the affected infrastructure, and how long the games will stay offline. Neither FromSoftware nor publisher Bandai Namco has answered them publicly.
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