An Elden Ring exploit is crashing PC players’ games and throwing them into infinite death loops, according to a report from PC Gamer.
As shown in a video from EldenRingUpdate on Twitter, the apparent hack occurs when an invader activates a specific ability, triggering some kind of glitch that causes the host’s game to crash. When the player tries to open the game, they find their character falling to their death over and over again.
⚠️Elden Ring PSA for PC players⚠️
There’s an exploit going around on PC where hackers will corrupt your save file while you’re invaded.
First they will crash your game, and when you open it back up, your character will be constantly falling to their death… pic.twitter.com/8et3bl8T1I
— Mordecai (@EldenRingUpdate) March 18, 2022
A user on Reddit suggests a possible workaround, but it doesn’t seem to work 100 percent of the time. You can try quitting the game using Alt + F4 just before your character dies, which is supposed to buy you a little bit more time during your next login. When you open the game again, quickly open the map and warp to a site of grace. If you don’t manage to get to a site of grace fast enough, the death loop will start over again. One user on Reddit reports losing 100 hours of gameplay, with no luck trying the workaround.
FromSoftware and Bandai Namco have yet to comment on the situation, but we’ll update this article if we find out any new information. For now, it’s probably best to back up your save files and play offline, as this is the only way to avoid invasions.
Earlier this year, an exploit in Dark Souls — another title from FromSoftware and Bandai Namco — left PC players vulnerable to dangerous remote code execution attacks. At the time, players were worried that the issue may also affect the not-yet-released Elden Ring. Dark Souls’ PC servers have been shut down since February so developers can fix the issue.