9 years in, Demon's Souls is losing its online features

From Software's Demon's Souls is set to lose its array of online services at the start of 2018, just over 9 years after the game first released for the PlayStation 3. 

The announcement was first made on the Sony Japan website and later confirmed as a worldwide closure by the Dark Souls twitter account. As of 3 AM ET on February 28, 2018, the online elements of Demon's Souls will no longer be functional.

This includes the game's iconic pop-in co-op and versus online play, the ability to leave and read in-game hints throughout levels, and the ability to replay the deaths of other players through the blood puddles they left behind.

Demon's Souls publisher Atlus had previously toyed with the idea of shuttering the game's online features as early as 2011, citing "significant cost" at the time, but abandoned those plans and vowed to keep the game's online components alive through at least 2012.

While the PS3 game itself will still be playable without those features, the online elements themselves were a big part of what helped make Demon's Souls such an influential game at the time of its launch in 2009, next to the title's often unforgiving combat. A similar suite of online features found their way into From Software's later Souls games in the Dark Souls series and the Victorian era-inspired game Bloodborne as well.