Posted on April 20, 2023 at 5:16 PM

Blizzard servers targeted by DDoS attack, Call of Duty and Overwatch 2 affected

Blizzard servers were recently targeted by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The attack led to some games, such as Call of Duty and Overwatch 2, being affected, with the players in these games unable to connect to the servers because of the DDoS attack.

Blizzard servers targeted by DDoS campaign

Blizzard has been the victim of several DDoS attacks that have happened in the past. There have been reports of these attacks affecting the ability of players to connect to servers and access their favorite games on the platform. The recent complaints are by players unable to access Overwatch 2, Call of Duty, and World of Warcraft servers.

The attack targeted Blizzard’s Battle.net. This attack has led to the company’s servers being down twice a week because of the high traffic caused by the DDoS attack. The latest attack on these servers happened on April 19. It marked the second attack to have happened in a week, with the first one happening on April 12.

Blizzard acknowledged that its servers were down with a Twitter post saying, “We are currently experiencing a DDoS attack, which may result in high latency and disconnections for some players. We are actively working to mitigate this issue.”

The DDoS attack led to some players having trouble connecting to games on the platform. However, some players did not complain of issues when connecting to the servers. As such, it is possible that this attack targeted a small group of people and a small section of the gaming platform.

While Blizzard acknowledged the attack, it did not provide any in-depth details on why these attacks were repeatedly targeting the company’s servers. After some time, Blizzard published a Twitter post saying that its servers were back online and that the attack had been mitigated.

In the update, Blizzard noted that players unable to access games’ servers would be required to restart their systems or flush the network’s DNS. The platform also shared a link with instructions on how players can do this to ensure they are back online playing games.

As aforementioned, it is not the first time that a DDoS campaign is targeting Blizzard. Additionally, Blizzard is not the only platform in the gaming industry that has been targeted by such kinds of attacks.

DDoS attacks have targeted several games, such as Apex Legends. Respawn Entertainment recently released a patch to resolve such issues and ensure that its servers are not affected by DDoS attacks in the future.

DDoS attacks on Blizzard’s Battle.net service

Battle.net is a service launched by Blizzard in 1996, shortly before the launch of the original Diablo. The Battle.net service offers a one-stop platform where gamers can explore and play the wide range of games published and developed by the platform. The Battle.net app has also been used as a hub to launch most Blizzard games, while the Battle.net servers host the games supported by this developer on PC and consoles. 

Most titles developed by Blizzard require the players to activate a Battle.net account. For instance, Overwatch 2 players need this account when playing the game on consoles. However, in other games, such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, players are not required to have a Battle.net account. However, they are still required to have an Activision ID.

The consolidation of Blizzard’s services under a single platform has often been criticized despite easing players’ experience on the platform. The Battle.net platform allows players to easily engage with each other online. However, with Blizzard having most of its games running on the same backend, it could create issues when things do not work as intended.

Outages and disruptions on Battle.net are not uncommon occurrences. These situations could make players frustrated when they cannot access their favorite games. More than 12 hours after Blizzard reported that the issue had been fixed, some players still reported problems accessing games and would still encounter errors playing games such as Diablo.

While this issue has been resolved, the fact that a single attack can create an issue across many titles at once is a cause for alarm. It illustrates the drawbacks faced by Blizzard and players when they consolidate all their games on one platform, as Battle.net could be a single point of failure.