Elden Ring has been hacked by an infamous Dark Souls hacker, and this time, he says he’s doing it for everyone’s good.
Malcolm Reynolds, who is legendary among Dark Souls players for using hacks and glitches within FromSoftware’s games to “soft-ban” players in multiplayer, is at it again in Elden Ring. According to Kotaku, Reynolds is using a newly discovered exploit to cause the game to register the players he invades as cheaters, meaning they can only play online with other players who have received the same mark. In effect, Reynolds is cheating and tricking the game into thinking others are cheating him.
Reynolds’ exploit relies on a debug item that was left in the game’s code but never intended to be discoverable in regular play. The item is called “pavel,” and when he invades other players, he’s able to inject pavel into their inventory before killing them with heavily modified and extremely powerful spells. When the player respawns, the game detects the presence of a debug item that isn’t supposed to exist and flags this as evidence that the player is cheating.
Reynolds is well known for using similar exploits in Dark Souls 3 and Dark Souls Remastered, but this time he made his intentions explicitly clear. In posting the video of his actions to YouTube, Reynolds claims he wants to draw the attention of FromSoftware and Bandai Namco to make it clear that their anti-cheat systems aren’t working as intended. Reynolds dubbed himself a “necessary evil,” breaking others’ games in order to force the developers to fix the exploits he’s weaponizing.
All three titles in the Dark Souls series have been offline since early February due to hackers’ exploits, and it seems like it hasn’t taken long for similar issues to crop up here. Players have been using mods and glitches to enhance their Elden Ring experience since the game’s launch, but Reynolds’ soft-banning exploit is more destructive than most, and it might spell serious trouble for the future of the game. By proving the game’s anti-cheat systems can be exploited, he offers a potentially useful framework for the developers of the game to resolve the issues — but he’s also opened the door for other potential hackers to harm other players online.
For those seeking to brave the dangers of Elden Ring, the game is available now on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC.
Source: Kotaku