For every company that has published Demons Souls in their respective regions, the game has from the sounds of things been a huge success….. and while the Asian English version was the one that garnered international interest for the title – it was ATLUS USA who released the game to the North American market and really kick started its popularity. As an action role-playing game, it was easily one of the most brutal released in this generation of consoles and even if it wasn’t built to have quality graphics or music – it was the gameplay the provided the most to the game.
However, all good things must come to an end. While you will not suddenly end up with an unusable Blu-ray disc as the game is fully playable in offline mode, it turns out that the games online servers – which included things like world invasion, floor messages and more will be going permanently offline from the 31st May 2012. Considering the game was released on the 6th October 2009, it is well and truly past its second year anniversary and evidently been successful enough to keep maintaining the servers – but even the most popular game dips in activity so it seems they have decided to pull the plug on the online server.
The following is a statement from Tim Pivnicny, VP of Marketing and Sales at ATLUS:
On October 6, 2009, North American gamers’ expectations of what an online roleplaying experience could be were forever changed. With Demon’s Souls, gamers received a title of breathtaking scope and vision, a project built on experimental cooperative and competitive multiplayer concepts, offering users both direct and indirect methods of communication and interaction. Elements of every connected player’s single player world carried into the worlds of others, sometimes as nothing more than an echo or afterimage, and other times in the form of an alliance or invasion. With countless hazards to memorize and plan for spread across each of the game’s sprawling dozen-plus worlds, the ability for players to leave hints—or, potentially, deceptions—and to view the final moments of other adventurers’ lives, created an unprecedented form of RPG crowd-sourcing that remains revolutionary to this day.
When subtle interactions were insufficient assistance, players could call across dimensions for assistance, pulling the weakened spirit forms of other adventurers—unable to communicate using conventional voice chat in order to preserve the game’s intense atmosphere—into their worlds to help them defeat the game’s unforgettable boss monsters. Other less altruistic spirit form users could invade the world of living adventurers and try to revive themselves by quite literally stealing that life from another. All of these online elements, all of the ways in which gamers would interact with each other, served to enhance and complement the core game and were designed so as to neither diminish nor distract from the experience and thrill of simply playing the game.
It has been a tremendous honor and privilege for all of our staff at ATLUS to have been involved with so innovative and groundbreaking an interactive entertainment experience. We poured our heart and soul into every facet of our involvement with Demon’s Souls, particularly the title’s memorable Deluxe Edition, which served as the only avenue through which to purchase the game’s official strategy guide. It was also of the utmost importance for us to sustain the game’s online experience as long as possible, even beyond the point at which sales could help to offset the expense. Regrettably, the online servers cannot be sustained forever and now the end draws near.
Thank you to the unparalleled passion and support of the Demon’s Souls community throughout these last two and a half years. The online adventure may end soon, but the memory of it—just like that of every boss strategy, every level floor plan, and hidden secret—lives on in the gamers for whom the game was so special.
Long live Boletaria!
