Summary
Hackers inElden Ringhave now resorted to crashing players' games and giving them hard-to-remove debuffs, causing frustration and putting the game’s anti-cheat software’s effectiveness into question. Players noted that while the crash already existed inElden Ringfor some time, it was only now that hackers decided to up their game.
Elden Ring,FromSoftware’s take in an open-world Soulslike RPG, has a history of being hacked, though incidents - while significant - are few and far between. Players may remember when hackers usedan exploit inElden Ringto corrupt the save files of the players they invaded. The victim will see their game crash and find their character repeatedly dying by falling off the map when they open the game again. More recently, a player took to social media to report a hacker that invaded their world, turned themselves into a “weird smoke,” and exploded into a million pieces of light effects, causing the victim’s frame rate to fall to 1.
RELATED:Elden Ring Gives Update on Shadow of the Erdtree DLC
Something similar recently happened to anotherElden Ringplayer. According to Reddit user Self_Reflexive’s post on the r/Eldenring subreddit, a hacker crashed their game after using what seemed to be an exploit. The video the player in question provided showed their world invaded by the two hackers, with one stun-locking them while the other casts a spell that produced a blinding flash of light and applied a sleep debuff. Unlike the previously discussedElden Ringhackerthat turned into a million pieces of light to make their victim’s frame rate drop to 1, the flash of light the hackers used was limited to just a flash.
While the light didn’t drop the victim player’s frame rate, it did force the game to crash, though the player couldn’t tell if the game hung up on them or if it “softlocked” itself. Either way, they were forced to shut the game down. However, the sleep debuffs the hackers applied to the victim player carried over to their worldafter openingElden Ringagain in single-player mode. They later discovered that using a bolus at the right time between sleep procs is the only way to remove it.
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a workaround for the crash the hackers induced yet as of press time.Elden Ring players recommend those playing the game on PC to find where their save files are and back them up to help them recover after an encounter with a malicious hacker in-game. Nevertheless, the incident puts the effectivity ofElden Ring’s anti-cheat software, Easy Anti-Cheat, into question, with some players calling it “easy (to circumvent) Anti-Cheat” instead. Easy Anti-Cheat is owned by Epic Games after acquiring its creator in 2018; it’s now presentinFortniteandFall Guys.
Elden Ring
WHERE TO PLAY
ELDEN RING, developed by FromSoftware, Inc. and BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Inc., is a fantasy action-RPG adventure set within a world created by Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin. Danger and discovery lurk around every corner in FromSoftware’s largest game to date. Hidetaka Miyazaki - President and Game Director of FromSoftware Inc. Known for directing critically-acclaimed games in beloved franchises including Armored Core and Dark Souls.George R.R. Martin is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including the acclaimed series A Song of Ice and Fire - A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast For Crows, and A Dance with Dragons. As a writer-producer, he has worked on The Twilight Zone, Beauty and the Beast, and various feature films and pilots that were never made. He lives with the lovely Parris in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
