'Dark Souls' Can Kill Even Your PC Now

We're long past the time when you could claim the Dark Souls series to be anything other than the most complete package when it comes to devious video game fun. There are trolls who will trick players into hilarious demises, hackers who will just humiliate hack-less players, and even hackers who will murder players and then get them banned in their place. The series has always been like a harmless version of that puzzle from Hellraiser one would receive immeasurable suffering as a reward for solving. 

But that has just changed – for the worse.

Just a few days ago, an official announcement claiming that the game's servers were temporarily shut down because of an ominous “online services issue” shook the Dark Souls community. Nice attempt at mystery there, but Dark Souls fans won't quit their quest for truth, even when the truth in question turns out to be that they're getting played for looking too deep into things. They ended up catching wind of a malicious code that makes use of a security flaw, paving the way for hackers to invade not just the game of another player but also to run code on their PC. This means the invader can take over your PC, steal all of your private data, and even brick it if they're kind enough.

What's worse is that this isn't just a problem in one of the games, but in every single title in the series. It's a huge problem, but credit where credit is due, one that Bandai Namco seems to be trying to fix. Good, because even if you feel like you're safe since you're done with the old games, white hat hackers warn that the upcoming Elden Ring too might suffer from the same security issue.

Top Image: Bandai Namco