Dark Souls PC servers down amid hacking fears

Action role-playing game Dark Souls 3 has been taken offline following reports of an exploit that could allow bad actors to take control of your PC.

Publisher Bandai Namco and developer FromSoftware have turned off player-v-player (PvP) servers, meaning gamers cannot play competitively.

The downtime affects Dark Souls 3, Dark Souls 2, and Dark Souls: Remastered.

But the purported exploit cannot affect console gamers and as such PvP remains available on PlayStation and Xbox.

Dark Souls 3 was released in 2016 to much fanfare and remains one of the top 100 most-played games on PC by active users, according to game-distribution service Steam.

Though the servers being down reduces functionality, the game remains entirely playable without PvP.

A tweet from the official Dark Souls 3 Twitter account said the servers had been "temporarily deactivated to allow the team to investigate recent reports of an issue with online services", adding: "We apologise for this inconvenience."

Though the exact reason for the servers being taken down was not given, it follows a series of reports about a serious vulnerability found in the game's code that could allow a bad actor to run programs remotely on your PC.

The exploit came to prominence when it was apparently used to interrupt a Twitch streamer - crashing his game and purportedly running a text-to-speech program that criticised his ability at the game.

Microsoft PowerShell, a program used to run code on a computer, had then opened by itself in place of the game, the streamer said.

There is no indication when the servers will be put back online.

BBC News has approached Bandai Namco for comment.