A petition requesting a PC port of From Software’s, profoundly-unforgiving Dark Souls has picked up 30,000 signatures in one day.
The petition was sparked by a thread on the Namco Bandai forums, following an article on Rock, Paper Shotgun. The petition picked up 7000 signatures in its first seven hours, and has now reached a total of 33,513 at the time of writing.
The petition correctly points out that Dark Souls is a perfect fit for the PC. It would be fair to say Dark Souls draws some influence from the savagely-difficult roguelikes of yesteryear.
“A port of this game has a high chance of being extremely successful for From Software and Namco Bandai,” reads the petition. “Given the sales of games such as The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and The Witcher, there is a large market for games like this. PC gamers love unforgiving, hardcore games.”
Dark Souls, which is a multiplatform title, has thoroughly thrashed its PS3 exclusive predecessor Demons Souls, having sold more copies in its first month of sales than the latter did during its entire lifetime. So there is money to be made in going multiplatform.
The petition also mentions that the more powerful hardware generally found in gaming PC’s would alleviate some of the game’s notorious performance issues, Blighttown being the most obvious example, and that Steam would be a perfect venue for the game’s unique online modes. I imagine the game’s thoroughly integrated online features, which are really quite essential to the experience, would be a potent defense against the inevitable piracy issue.
From Software did dabble in PC ports recently with the abysmal, Ninja Gaiden knock-off, Ninja Blade. It was a fairly terrible port, to be sure, but it was also a fairly terrible game to begin with. Dark Souls on the other hand, is legitimately brilliant, even if it beats me like a drunken stepdad.
