Good news: everything's ok guys!
I just called Volker Rieck from FDS File Defense Service. They were indeed hired by Bandai Namco, but not the germany division, but the US Europe one, to take down all the debug mode patches.
Dutante's DSfix was not part of the plan!
Mr. Rieck is currently writing emails to Namco and dropbox to clear everything. Durante is allowed to reupload the patch, there is nothing wrong with it.
Mr. Rieck was nice and took the time to explain the situation to me. I am currently on the phone, so I might add a bit more information when I come home in a few hours.
I just called Volker Rieck from FDS File Defense Service. They were indeed hired by Bandai Namco, but not the germany division, but the US Europe one, to take down all the debug mode patches.
Dutante's DSfix was not part of the plan!
Mr. Rieck is currently writing emails to Namco and dropbox to clear everything. Durante is allowed to reupload the patch, there is nothing wrong with it.
Mr. Rieck was nice and took the time to explain the situation to me. I am currently on the phone, so I might add a bit more information when I come home in a few hours.
Whew! Everything is a-ok now. Everyone can go back to using DSfix and enjoying Durante's hard work.
Original: Durante, the creator of the reason most of us are actually able to enjoy Dark Souls on the PC, remarked about an hour ago that a DMCA takedown was issued on DSfix. If you don't know what DSfix is, it's a small took that completely unscrewed the PC release of the game, offering a way for players to access more graphical options within the game and various control tweaks.
It's essentially a tool that made the game even playable on the PC and has been around almost since the game itself has been available on the PC. Durante shared the letter he received from Dropbox about the DMCA takedown request that reportedly came from Bandai Namco.
Hi Dropbox User,
We've received a notification under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") from BANDAI NAMCO Games Germany GmbH that the following material is claimed to be infringing:
Accordingly, under Section 512(c)(1)(C) of DMCA, we've removed or disabled access to the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.
As a result of this notice, public sharing on your account has been disabled. We will reinstate your account's public links if you remove the file(s) listed above from your account.
We've received a notification under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") from BANDAI NAMCO Games Germany GmbH that the following material is claimed to be infringing:
Accordingly, under Section 512(c)(1)(C) of DMCA, we've removed or disabled access to the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.
As a result of this notice, public sharing on your account has been disabled. We will reinstate your account's public links if you remove the file(s) listed above from your account.
The thing is, DSfix doesn't actually include any material from the game or from Bandai Namco. It's entirely possible the request was made in error as it would be quite strange for them to do this now after it's been around for so long.
(via NeoGAF)
It's hard to find now since this news happened, but didn't From Software originally admit they weren't quite able to make a good PC port, and that they were relying on the community to make it better?
Then the latest patch happened and re-broke it all, PC gaming is lucky to have people like Durante.
Edit: Yay, glad this worked out.