'Dark Souls 3' Cheaters And Legit Players Get Banned: What Happened?

FromSoftware is currently issuing a number of bans against Dark Souls 3 PC players suspected of using illegal methods to conquer the game.

Online privileges are restricted once players are hit by the ban.

A pop-up window will caution players that invalid game data has been detected, succinctly followed by another window stating their account has been penalized, or in other words, banned.

This should be good news since exploitive players who use illegal means to defeat other players in the game are now removed, thereby, leveling the playing field.

But the bans are reportedly affecting honest players as well.

These players claim that they've never cheated to either progress in the game or gain an advantage over other players.

Dark Souls 3 community pages on Reddit and Steam are receiving an increasing amount of reports that call out FromSoftware and Bandai Namco for the unjust bans.

It seems developers did not respond within the 24 hours that transpired after initial reports, pushing players to formulate their own hypotheses and suggest possible workarounds.

Based on the causes listed in user-submitted reports, players have come to assume that accounts that use third-party software like SCP Drivers, which allow players to use a console on a PC, and Shadowplay, Nvidia's game recording software, are being flagged as illegal accounts.

Meowtock, one of the players who reported the issue on Reddit, also suspects that players who accomplish a considerable amount of progress during offline play and later on log on to online mode may have confused server systems.

"Going offline, progressing, then returning back online at any point for whatever reason could be the cause of the issues, with some sort of server file corruption conflicting with the game safe itself," Meowtock writes.

It took awhile before developers finally took notice of the increasing number of reports and responded on the issue.

It seems Dark Souls 3 players may have to wait for some time until developers find the causes for the unwarranted bans.