The online servers for Demon’s Souls will be switched off tomorrow, publisher Atlus has announced. They are set to be switched off at 5:00pm Japan Time, which will be 08:00am in the UK.
As of tomorrow, many of the game’s features will no longer work, including online cooperative play and invasions. It also means that leaderboards, as well as wandering silhouettes, bloodstains and messages left by other players will also disappear from the game. Demon’s Souls will still be playable offline, but if you want to experience some of the online functionality for the last time, now is the time to do it.
Launched in 2009 on PlayStation 3, Demon’s Souls proved to be a hugely popular action-RPG which laid down the foundations for the Dark Souls series to build upon. The online servers were originally due to be shutdown in 2012, but due to the popularity of the game at the time, developer FromSoftware decided to keep them online for as long as possible. They announced last November though that the servers would be switched off on February 28th.
In a statement released by publisher Atlus, they stated, “It’s with mixed emotions we say goodbye to the service. Countless players have enjoyed Demon’s Souls and the functionality it introduced to players when such things were rarer. If you’ve played the game then you understand the feeling of dying multiple times in the span of 10 minutes or dealing with a boss fight so difficult that it took you a week just to figure out the best way to attack.”
“The unforgiving nature of the game has provided countless enjoyable moments of frustration and anger, but also the elation felt from beating something so challenging, This difficulty and grit helped pave the way for even more punishing games such as its spiritual successor Dark Souls, the 2017 hit Nioh, and the landmark PS4 title, Bloodborne.”
