DDoS attacks ruined the weekend for Diablo 4 players
Diablo 4 is an always-online game, except when it's not.
If you tried playing Diablo 4 over the weekend, you're likely well aware that it wasn't possible for most of it. I know I did, and definitely couldn't even log in. I know I did, and what I initially thought was a problem on my end, turned out to be on Blizzard's end.
More specifically, the developer's infrastructure suffered a DDoS attack, which knocked out servers for Diablo 4 - a game that requires a constant online connection.
As you can imagine, players quickly took to Reddit and social media to voice their frustration, and wonder if others are also unable to log in. Blizzard quickly acknowledged the outage, confirming that it was indeed the result of a DDoS attack.
The developer utilised the in-game news widget to tell players that a DDoS attack is happening, which could cause disconnects, and failure to log in. More frustratingly, the DDoS attack also meant that even those who were to able to play ran into latency and rubber-banding issues (beyond the usual).
A DDoS is a type of attack that floods servers with fake requests, overwhelming them to the point of failure. Bot networks are often used by bad actors to launch these attacks, which are typically meant to harm the target's uptime.
Most of the attacks took place on Sunday, and they were not limited to a certain region, either. Both of Blizzard's North America and Europe customer service Twitter accounts confirmed the outage.
Things took several hours to go back to normal, and they have been stable since late Sunday. For more Diablo 4 coverage, why not hit the link? Plenty of interesting stories from the community (and elsewhere) in there, we promise!