A lot of players have been enjoying the recently released Dark Souls Remastered, especially since it can be played on lower-end PC’s. However, one not-so-enjoyable aspect of the remastered game’s PC port is that certain anti-virus programs can apparently corrupt your save data, so consider this fair warning if you regularly use any sort of anti-virus software.
According to this recent thread on the Dark Souls subreddit, both BitDefender and Windows Defender can potentially corrupt a Dark Souls Remastered save file. Cloud sync services such as Dropbox and Google Drive can also have adverse affects on the game since they can sometimes misinterpret them as “in use” and thus inaccessible to the player.
Fortunately, publisher Bandai Namco has been made aware of the problem and issued the following statement over on the Dark Souls Remastered Steam page:
“Salutations, Chosen Undead.
Based on feedback that we have received from the community, we must warn you that some popular anti-virus software may damage Dark Souls: Remastered save files, or treat those files as if they were corrupted.
Additionally, if your computer uses a cloud sync service (e.g., Google Drive or Dropbox), it is possible for save files to be interpreted as “in use” by the system, rendering them inaccessible by the game.
In both cases, if you run into this problem, please take a moment to exclude your save files from being managed by your sync services and/or your anti-virus software.
Thank you for your kind attention.”
The good news is that other users have reported using programs like Avira Anti-Virus without issue, so it seems the problem is isolated to very specific programs. For more on Dark Souls Remastered, be sure to read about all of the hidden content that was apparently cut from the game but left buried in its files.