A dangerous remote code execution exploit has been found in Dark Souls 3 which has forced Bandai Namco to pull down the game servers with immediate effect. According to Dexerto, the vulnerability is currently limited to PC gamers who play online and is affecting Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3 and could potentially affect the upcoming Elden Ring game.

The exploit sees users gain access to your PC through the Dark Souls servers and allows them to run programs and scripts to obtain data and even damage your content. Streamer The_Grim_Sleeper caught the exploit on camera. He was streaming Dark Souls 3 and suddenly his game crashed and a robotic voice belonging to Microsoft’s text-to-speech generator started criticizing his gameplay.

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The hacker managed to open Microsoft Power Shell and launch the text-to-speech feature by running a script. Thankfully, the hacker didn’t mean any harm. Instead, he was aware of the exploit and used the streamer’s platform to help spread awareness of the vulnerability. The hacker claims that he reached out to the Dark Souls developer FromSoftware to warn them about the issue but they ignored his warning.

He then took it upon himself to utilize the streaming platform in order to publically hack the game to show the severity of the exploit. Thankfully, FromSoftware has since taken action against the vulnerability and pulled down the Dark Souls servers until a fix is implemented. A FromSoftware representative released a statement saying that the studio is thankful for the ping and confirmed the servers are offline until further notice. Keep in mind that this downtime does not affect the console servers.

PvP servers for Dark Souls 3, Dark Souls 2, and Dark Souls: Remastered have been temporarily deactivated to allow the team to investigate recent reports of an issue with online services.
Servers for Dark Souls: PtDE will join them shortly.

We apologize for this inconvenience.

— Dark Souls (@DarkSoulsGame) January 23, 2022