Last month, publisher Namco Bandai took down its online player-versus-player servers for all PC Dark Souls games after players found a serious vulnerability that allowed for remote execution of malicious code on an opponent’s computer. While a Reddit user who publicly identified that issue said the exploit would also work on Namco Bandai’s upcoming Elden Ring, the publisher is now assuring players that the highly anticipated title will be protected.

“We have extended the investigation to Elden Ring… and have made sure the necessary security measures are in place for this title on all target platforms,” Namco Bandai wrote in a tweet Wednesday morning.

The wording of that statement suggests that Elden Ring‘s online services will launch as expected when the game is released on February 25. That’s important for players looking forward to online co-op gameplay, competitive multiplayer battles/invasions, and even basic message support between player worlds, as seen in Dark Souls.

Namco Bandai now says that it has “identified the cause” of the Dark Souls exploit, which didn’t require any specific interaction on the player’s part to make them vulnerable to malware from a PvP opponent. But because of the “time required to set up proper testing environments” (and perhaps because of the focus on Elden Ring security), Namco Bandai writes that online services for Dark Souls will continue to be offline until after Elden Ring‘s launch.

“We will continue to do everything we can to bring back these services as soon as possible,” the company writes.

The Dark Souls vulnerability surfaced just weeks after Minecraft players were exposed to Log4j, which went on to affect hundreds of thousands of machines worldwide. https://arstechnica.com/?p=1832796