Eight Years Later, Demon’s Souls’ Online Services To End In Japan [UPDATE]

Update (11/27/2017):

Hours after Sony announced it would be shuttering online services for the Japanese version of Demon’s Souls, Atlus announced that the North American and European versions of Demon’s Souls will be losing their online functions as well.

The date this happens will be the same as the Japanese version: Feb. 28, 2018.

Here is some of what Atlus had to say on the matter:

“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.”

One can only wonder what the reason behind this sudden announcement is. Perhaps those involved just felt like it was time for the game to die: the game has been supported for eight years, after all. But some are taking this news as an indicator of an upcoming remaster for the PlayStation 4.

It seems unlikely, but with PlayStation Experience just around the corner and Sony promising some “surprises,” anything is possible.

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Original Article

It’s been eight years since Demon’s Souls first began its online services in Japan and come 2018, it will all be coming to an end.

The news comes from Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan Asia who announced that Demon’s Souls would be losing its online functions come Feb. 28, 2018 and thus players will no longer have access to the following features:

— Online multiplayer (co-op and invasions)
— Writing and reading hint messages
— Other players’ bloodstains (death replays)
— Wandering phantoms
— Browsing the rankings

In other words, some of the most defining features that made Demon’s Souls worth playing will be gone, making it essentially a single player experience. With that in mind, the game is still fully playable, but it will definitely be losing some of the charm that made Demon’s Souls so special.

Demon’s Souls arrived on the PlayStation 3 on Feb. 5, 2009 and served as a spiritual successor to From Software’s King’s Field series. Between its dark fantasy aesthetic, fun gameplay, unforgiving difficulty and unique multiplayer functions, it quickly gained a following which has remained loyal to this very day. It did well critically and commercially, so much so that From Software eventually capitalized off that success by later creating two games in its image: Dark Souls and Bloodborne.

Do note, however, that this news only applies to Japan and has no apparent bearing on North America or Europe.  As opposed to Japan where Sony maintains Demon’s Souls’ servers, the North American and European servers are maintained by Atlus and it has made no mention of any plans to shutter servers in either region.