Summary
- Hackers in Elden Ring are now crashing players' games and causing frustrating debuffs, raising questions about the effectiveness of the game's anti-cheat software.
- Previous hacking incidents in Elden Ring involved save file corruption and frame rate manipulation, but the recent hacks involve crashing the game and applying sleep debuffs.
- There is currently no known workaround for the crashes caused by hackers, and players are advised to back up their save files to recover after encountering a malicious hacker in-game.
Hackers in Elden Ring have 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 in Elden Ring for 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 used an exploit in Elden Ring to 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.
Something similar recently happened to another Elden Ring player. 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 discussed Elden Ring hacker that 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 world after opening Elden Ring again 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 p layers 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 of Elden 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 present in Fortnite and Fall Guys.
Elden Ring
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 95 /100 Critics Rec: 98%
- Released
- February 25, 2022
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
- From Software
- Publisher(s)
- Bandai Namco Entertainment, From Software
- Engine
- Proprietary
- Multiplayer
- Online Co-Op, Online Multiplayer
- Cross-Platform Play
- PS4 & PS5 and Xbox One & Xbox Series X|S
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.
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X
