An Elden Ring hacker has said he’s a “necessary evil” after infiltrating players’ games and forcing them to be softbanned.
Malcolm Reynolds, notorious for his hacking history in Dark Souls 3 and Dark Souls Remastered, has managed to hack FromSoftware‘s latest hit title and has been going on a player-killing rampage.
As infiltrating players’ games is a core mechanic in any FromSoftware title, there shouldn’t be a problem with this, but Reynolds is not only purging Tarnished, he’s also giving players invalid items and status effects to get them softbanned from Elden Ring (via, Kotaku).
The hacker was able to pull this off by modifying the game’s code which gave him access to a trove of invalid content to use against players. When he uses these spells and items against players, the targeted player will be notified that they have an invalid item either in their world or in their possession after being beaten by Reynolds, they will be softbanned from the game.
A new YouTube video uploaded by Reynolds shows him enabling his cheats with a “Hardscoping Tutorial” prompt which ultimately makes the player being targeted get banned from the game. The hacker demonstrates his abilities by targeting multiple players with incredibly powerful spells that have been modified with cheats, and the result is just terrifying.
Kotaku contacted Reynolds who told the publication that the “Hardscoping Tutorial” is actually a debug item called “pavel” used by developers in testing which he found in Elden Ring‘s source code.
“How you manage to bypass easy anti-cheat is another thing,” Reynolds said. “There’s basically a mask over the anti-cheat. While this mask is on the game [only] cares about ‘who it is’ and ‘what it’s doing,’ but once you take that mask off the anti-cheat, the game doesn’t care who it is anymore.”
Reynolds told Kotaku that he wants to get caught hacking Elden Ring, saying FromSoftware should use this situation as a lesson to implement better anti-cheat software.
“I’m necessary evil,” Reynolds said. “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 Namco will fix it. Time to go mobile.”
In other news, an Elden Ring streamer has defeated Godrick the Grafted with bananas.
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