Battle.net hit with DDoS attack, all games briefly affected

You might have noticed earlier today that Battle.net was playing up, preventing you from accessing the Overwatch closed beta (or, you know, all those other games Blizzard is responsible for). It turns out the downtime was due to a malicious DDoS attack, but Blizzard has confirmed that services are back to normal.

After users raised the issue on the Battle.net forums, a support spokesperson confirmed there was something amiss. "It looks like we experienced a potential DDoS on one of our datacenters," the statement read. "Initial impact appears to have ended and our engineers [have] put up some buffers to resolve the issue, and realms should start recovering. We're continuing to monitor and work on mitigating the impact."

Since then, Blizzard has confirmed the problem solved, but who was behind it? Notorious hacking group Lizard Squad has taken responsibility, but it's impossible to confirm either way. In addition to DDoSing both EU and US Blizzard servers, the group also appeared to gain access to internal Blizzard contact lists.

The more interesting question is why: Blizzard generally maintains a good rapport with its userbase, but there has been some consternation surrounding its recent closure of a fan-built World of Warcraft server. Whether it's that, or whether it was done just for the fun of it, I guess we'll probably never know.

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.