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back to article Blizzard blighted by another DDoS storm

Blizzard, the game developer behind World of Warcraft and Overwatch, was hit by another DDoS attack on Tuesday. The assault coincides with the final day of its Overwatch Summer Games event. In an update to an official Twitter account, Blizzard admitted the assault was affecting its ability to deliver services. "We continue to …

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  1. Badger Murphy

    One weird trick to mitigate DDOS attacks!

    So, it turns out, if you host a game locally and give your IP/domain name out to your friends, you can all play a game without getting DDOSed, since none of the hacker groups know your IP address!

    Pretty cool, right?

    Oh...

    Your game is published by some paranoid control freaks that require everything to be always online to a centralized service.

    Well at least the servers and their connection are probably super robust to make sure there are no release day debacles or other problems!

    Oh...

    Well I'm sure they let you run it in an offline mode, in the event you want to continue to play the game after they turn their auth servers down in some years! I mean that would be....

    Oh...

    Well, good luck!

    7 5 Reply
    1. Down not across
      Reply Icon

      Re: One weird trick to mitigate DDOS attacks!

      Well I'm sure they let you run it in an offline mode, in the event you want to continue to play the game after they turn their auth servers down in some years! I mean that would be....

      Offline mode doesn't really make sense for an MMORPG like World of Warcraft.

      Never bothered with Overwatch so I can't comment on that.

      2 0 Reply
      1. Badger Murphy
        Reply Icon
        Unhappy

        Re: One weird trick to mitigate DDOS attacks!

        Sure, games that exist wholly online can be an exception to the rule, but the engineer in me screams, MADNESS!", to the notion of adding unnecessary dependencies to things that are already plenty complex.

        Sadly, paranoia surrounding piracy seems to have trumped sanity for the big game developers. It even seems to be seeping into business software at this point; sad.

        5 0 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: One weird trick to mitigate DDOS attacks!

          overwatch (fps moba), diablo (speed running random dungeon grinder), heart of the swarm (moba) and star craft (competitive rts) are primarily competitive ladder games so need to have a controlled environment to make sure people aren't cheating.

          Of course they also want to sell their cosmetics too.

          If memory serves you can play chunks of starcraft campaign while the servers are offline.

          0 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: One weird trick to mitigate DDOS attacks!

      Well, GTA online always tops out at 30 players on each lobby, which can be also limited to Crew Only.

      I can see GTA being almost totally DDoS proof, since Rockstar only demands authentication to their Social Club upon login. However, is the Social Club crashes, everything falls apart.

      And, in fact, I believe R* never hosts the GTA game itself, they simply use one of the players PCs as host behind the scenes. I may suffer severe lag when logging in a public lobby, but if I request an invite-only lobby, it becomes lag-free, which means MY machine is hosting it.

      Not just that, but if one player loses synchonization with the others in the lobby, it will appear as everybody in the lobby left, while everybody else sees as if you left instead. Given how mods work, everybody also has root powers in-game, which matches the general game behaviour.

      Blizzard, on the other hand, centralizes all access, and have their own servers...

      0 0 Reply
  2. Crazy Operations Guy

    Probably not a DDoS

    Its likely that their infrastructure just fell over and they don't want to 'fess up. I've seen their infrastructure, its barely held together by shoe laces and chewing gum.

    5 0 Reply
    1. Captain DaFt
      Reply Icon

      Re: Probably not a DDoS

      So what probably happened:

      Blizzard IT worker:"Server down? No probs, I... Crap! my shoes use Velcro, and I'm all out of gum!"

      2 0 Reply
  3. Chez

    Someone must have been mad about the Genji nerfs in Overwatch

    That or the game is so unbalanced that the physical server racks actually tipped over.

    2 0 Reply
  4. Hans 1
    Mushroom

    Yeah, yeah, yeah, good excuse, they found back then ... I watch the kids play this game, overwatch ... they spend about a third of the time "waiting" to be added to a game ... and, Blizzard have the decency to call it "Quick game" ... 2 minutes waiting time, which happens quite frequently, plus the 30 seconds to choose your character (which is useless, since you can select you character in the map), plus 30 seconds to allow defendants to get into position (the only waiting time that makes sense).

    FFS, even when you want to play AI bots, which I tried ... immediately choosing highest level AI (more fun), I gave up after waiting 3 whole minutes ...

    They should call it OverPatient !

    icon: D.Va just sent you a present ;-)

    0 0 Reply

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