The Duskbloods' first network test never got past the login screen

A network test exists to find out how many players the servers can hold. By that measure, the first session of The Duskbloods answered its question very fast. It opened at 3 a.m. PDT on August 21, and most of the players who had been picked never got past the login screen. What they got instead was a notice saying the game server login had failed, and a button to try again.

Four scheduled hours, closed after about ninety minutes

FromSoftware shut the session down partway through its window. The notice on the studio’s account is short: an apology for the trouble caused by game server problems, confirmation that the day’s session was over, and a line saying work on the servers would continue and that further scheduling would be announced later. Because nothing was confirmed at that moment, it was unclear for a while whether the four remaining windows would open at all.

They did. The next session returned at its scheduled time, and the ones after it have kept to the clock since. The full run was five windows: two on August 21, one at midday on August 22, and two more on August 23, the last of them from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. PDT. Only the first of those five was lost.

A game where connecting is the game

The Duskbloods is FromSoftware’s online action game, exclusive to Nintendo Switch 2. Nintendo’s own listing puts it at one to eight players online with a 2026 release. You play a Bloodsworn of Dusk, a figure carrying blood given powers, and up to eight of you enter the same match, forming short alliances and breaking them. Access to the test came only through download codes sent to selected applicants, which is the point worth holding on to: this was a closed test with a capped guest list, and it still buckled on the first attempt.

This is the part that separates it from the studio’s earlier work. Dark Souls and Elden Ring are single-player games that other people drop into for a while, so a bad connection costs you an invasion, not the session. A game that needs eight people in one place before it can start has no such slack. A failed login is zero minutes played, which is what the first day cost the people who signed up for it. It is also why the studio is testing at all. Everything the game asks of its servers, from filling a lobby of eight to keeping them in sync, has to work before a launch date can be set.

What to watch next

FromSoftware has not said what it takes from this test, nor whether a second one is coming, nor how far the server work described in that first notice has gone. As of August 23, 2026, the release field on Nintendo’s page still reads 2026 and nothing more. The day that line turns into a month and a date is the next confirmed fact this game will produce.