People who still play Dark Souls II on the PS3 and Xbox 360 will no longer be able to access its online features after March 2024. FromSoftware has announced that it will terminate online services for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions on Sunday, March 31, 2024.
After this date, players on the legacy consoles will have to play the game entirely offline without any multiplayer features and asynchronous bloodstains, shades, and messages. The studio stated the aging and deterioration of game servers as the primary reason for the online shutdown.
As a reminder, FromSoftware and Bandai Namco released the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Dark Souls II worldwide in March 2014. Therefore, exactly ten years will have just passed by the time it shuts down servers for the consoles.
FromSoftware reiterates that the Dark Souls II online shutdown will only happen to the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. It reassures players that they can still access the game's online features on the PS4, Xbox One, and Windows PC—both DirectX 9 and 11—versions for the foreseeable future.
This will not be the first time FromSoftware has deactivated online features due to aging servers. In October 2022, the studio abandoned online support for the PC version of Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition due to "an aging system." Similarly, the 2012 PC release had run for ten years when FromSoftware pulled the online plug.
Dark Souls II is available on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC. The game is also playable on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One via the Scholar of the First Sin edition released in 2015.
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