For those playing Dark Souls 3 online on the PC, it's time to play at your own risk for a while.
Reports have surfaced from a poster on NeoGaf that a player going by the name of 'Malcolm Reynolds' is currently softbanning other players in the game by using hacked weapons.
Softbanning essentially forces players to play the game only with people who have been caught cheating as well, leading to a de-facto segregated system for cheaters and non-cheaters. His method is to use a hacked dagger that, by all accounts, gives the player a tremendous amount of souls when hit. Having too many souls is a bad thing, as after 3-4 hits, Dark Souls 3 softbans you automatically due to the anti-cheat system in place.
The player is also using an infamous speed/invisibility combo to catch players off-guard, stab them a few times, and watch the implosion. To add insult to injury, Reynolds is also streaming his entire troll session on youtube, which has been going on for the past five hours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iztSqpIb3hA A reddit thread has also been opened regarding the player and the large amounts of soft bans, with a quick work-around for Dark Souls 3 players, namely through making a new Steam account and game share between the two accounts to continue playing.
Another user in the reddit thread noted to contact J.Kartje, the Community Manager of the U.S branch of Namco Bandai, through social media.
Dark Souls 3 has been having problems with cheaters for a while now on the PC. A recent article by Kotaku talked about how several players were given a warning by Namco Bandai for their cheating, although what the bannable offenses are is explicitly unknown. Apparently any bannable offense, from picking up hacked items to using cheats to avoid taking damage, can lead to a softban. Namco Bandai has said in the past that players need to play at their own risk while on the PC version of the game.
Quick Take
This kind of stuff I hate, honestly. Just some guy trolling the game on purpose because he can, until he gets caught. It does kind of ruin the fun in multiplayer games for me; especially when it's using cheats to get stuff done. Hopefully someone from From Software or Namco Bandai can take care of this soon, but considering their laissez-faire policies so far it's unlikely.
