Blizzard Targeted by DDOS Attack: Impact on Battle.net Service.
Blizzard’s Battle.net service experienced significant disruptions due to a DDOS attack. This attack affected a variety of popular Blizzard titles, including World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2. While the issue has now been resolved, it highlights the challenges of relying on a single online service for all of Blizzard’s games.
Blizzard’s Battle.net service is a popular online gaming platform that provides a one-stop-shop for players to explore and play the developer’s vast catalog of games. The PC client serves as a launcher, storefront, and social service, with Battle.net servers hosting the developer’s games on both PC and consoles. While Battle.net makes it easy to quickly team up with friends online, having all its games running on the same backend can also lead to headaches for players when everything doesn’t work as intended. Sadly, Battle.net problems and disruptions are not uncommon, and they can leave players frustrated when they are unable to log in to their favorite games.
DDOS Attack on Battle.net
Today Blizzard’s Battle.net service was targeted by a DDOS attack, which led to widespread disruptions for players in a variety of Blizzard games, including World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2. The attack caused sign-in problems and low latency for players, making it difficult for them to access and play their favorite games. Players began reporting problems with online functionality, leading Blizzard’s customer support team to begin posting troubleshooting solutions for affected players.
Blizzard’s Response to the Attack
Blizzard support eventually calculated that the problem was the result of a DDOS attack and stated, it was "actively working to mitigate this issue." A few hours later, a follow-up post stated that the attacks had ended and advised players to try logging into their games again. While the issue has now been resolved for the majority of users, some players still reported issues 12 hours after Blizzard's customer support team tweeted that it had been resolved.
[#Bnet] The DDOS attacks that we were monitoring have ended. If you are still unable to log in try https://t.co/XSV7UVmub2
— Blizzard CS - The Americas (@BlizzardCS) April 8, 2023
Impact of the Attack on Blizzard’s Games
The DDOS attack had a significant impact on Blizzard’s games, causing disruptions such as disconnections when signing in to World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2, as well as high latency and slow log-in times overall across the service. The attack highlights the challenges of relying on a single online service for all of Blizzard’s games, as a single DDOS attack can cause problems across multiple titles. Other online gaming platforms have also previously seen similar problems, so this problem is not specific to Blizzard.
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DDOS attack on Blizzard’s Battle.net service highlights the challenges of relying on a single online service for all of the developer’s games. Even though the problem has been fixed, it significantly disrupted with players' ability to access and enjoy their favorite games across a number of different games. Online gaming platforms must make sure that their services can withstand such attacks as the gaming industry advances and expands.