Posted on February 7, 2020 at 2:51 PM

DDoS Attack Shuts Out Online Players of EVE for Nine Days

Attack on the internet game is not a new thing in the online community. Those who are familiar with such attacks know that these attacks usually last for hours before normal service returns for the gamers. Players can be locked out for a maximum of one day.

However, the EVE online game attack is on a whole new level as nine days have already passed without some of the players having access to the game’s portal. According to security researchers, this length of time players have been locked out is unusually long.

Although the attack has not completely wiped off the whole game offline during the period, there are lots of players of the game that cannot even engage in conversations let alone fly a spaceship.

The developer of EVE Online, CCP Games, would not have envisaged the level of attack that shut off its players from the game’s portal for nine days now. The in-game chat service is inoperable and many players cannot access the portal, as an “unable to log in” message always comes up whenever they try.

Some players experiencing lag errors

Some of the players that were able to login have been experiencing problems too. CCP Games have reported disconnection and lag errors for those players that were able to log in. What’s even worse is the fact that there is no specific timeframe when the issue would be patched. Already, the players have been locked out for nine days, so they are probably going to stay for more days before the issue will be resolved.

There is speculation from some players who think the problem is not from DDoS attack, but from the DDoS prevention service used by CCP to prevent the total crash of the system.  Their reason behind this speculation is the fact that some of the players that were initially locked out were able to access their portal via VPN networks outside the U.S.

U.S. players mostly affected

Downtimes and DDoS attacks are usually bad news for MMOs. It’s even worse for EVE Online that has a complex game-driven system. It gives access to players from around the world. The hacking of EVE’s system is not a complete one because some players can still access the portal from their location. It seems the most affected players are those in the U.S. as many of them have not been able to login to the EVE platform. There have been complaints of broken chart and lag from Africa, Australia, and other parts of the world.

CEO of Bastion Alliance, player Carneros, said that the situation is especially bad because people are trying to fuel or defend structures, and they are having a torrid time using the portal while others are not having issues.

According to him, there are some players who can’t carry out their space jobs. As a result, it is leading to some persisting issues that would be very difficult for the CCP game masters to reverse.

Players threatening to cancel their accounts

Already, some players have expressed their frustration on the difficulties to access their accounts. They are thinking of canceling their accounts if the issue is not resolved very soon. Others are demanding compensation from the game masters for their inability to login and use their accounts for several days. However, Carneros pointed out that the cost of this complete cutoff on players is much more than their weekly subscription.

The co-leader of Forsaken Empire, Lord’s Servant, said that they are presently fighting at an extreme disadvantage. He said they are not able to contest hostile actions or defend stuff, which is paramount at the beginning of a conflict.

He further said that because they were not able to log in and contest things as usual, the hostiles have succeeded in establishing themselves in their region.

Many players have lost ground

In a Reddit post, Lord’s Servant also pointed out the implication of the DDoS attacks, especially on smaller alliances. Since a lot of members were not able to access and take part in their battle, they’ve lost a lot of grounds, which cannot be easily covered. He further said since they cannot engage in battles, the best in-game skill or ISK will be utterly useless in this scenario.

The only way to make an impact and change things is when the player is able to participate in-game. But in this scenario where some players are locked out, those who are able to access the portal would have undue advantage over others.