Legendary Dark Souls Hacker is Now on a Killing Spree in Elden Ring, Wants Developers to Catch him

An infamous Dark Souls hacker has hacked the Elden Ring. soul games have frequently suffered from game-breaking exploits.  Elden Ring is just the latest FromSoft game to be the target of a well-known Souls hacker who enjoys invading users' worlds and softbanning them.

Dark Souls hacker Malcolm Reynolds, who is a longtime hacker of FromSoft games, is now on Elden Ring. He caused a slew of issues for gamers of Dark Souls 3 and Dark Souls Remastered a few years back. He softbanned people in both instances by altering the game's programming to give them invalid items and status effects. In Elden Ring, he's up to the same tricks, invading people's worlds and offering them things they'd rather not have before killing them.

The hacker was able to accomplish this by altering the game's programming. This gave him access to a treasure of invalid content that he could use against people. As a result, the targeted player will be notified of having an invalid item in their world or in their possession. Consequently they will be softbanned from the game after Reynolds beat them.

Reynolds claimed to have utilized the “Hardscoping Tutorial” exploit, which is a debug item named Pavel that developers used in testing. The debug still exists in the game's code but not in the game itself. He initiates this into a player's inventory through a variety of modified spells. Elden Ring marks this Pavel as an invalid item once the player dies and returns to their own world. The game takes this as evidence that the player is a cheater. Consequently, this results in a softban, where the affected player can only play online with other cheaters.

Reynolds claims he's a “necessary evil” in forcing Bandai to repair its anti-cheat system. In a video titled “SOFTBANNING IN ELDEN RING,” on youtube, Reynolds stated he wants to attract the attention of the developers. He believes Bandai Namco and FromSoftware should learn from this and improve their anti-cheat software to protect hackers from manipulating game code.

“I'm necessary evil,” Reynolds stated when asked why he's hacking the game in this way.

“You might be asking if getting caught is part of the plan, and yes it is. If I pull it off will the game die? I don’t think so, but maybe Bandai will fix it. Time to go mobile,” he said. 

Elden Ring was released at the end of February and is now available on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC.

So, what’s your take? What do you think about Reynolds' latest hack on Elden Ring? Let us know over on our socials here or down in the comments below.

Looking for More Content? Take a Look at These Articles!

Gambit to Compete in ESL Pro League Season 15 under the Team Name “Players”