"Overwatch" players experienced game disruptions on Aug. 2 and it seems that the glitches were not a technical problem on Blizzard Entertainment's end. It was revealed that the game was hit with DDoS attack which downed servers, making it inaccessible to gamers.
It was not just "Overwatch" that was affected by the attack but almost all of Blizzard's games including "World of Warcraft" and "Hearthstone" experienced problems with the gameplay. The attack was serious enough that players were unable to connect to the games' servers to begin the game.
It was not long when Blizzard discovered that the glitch was actually a DDoS attack and they were quick to act to resolve the issues. On Aug. 3, via the Overwatch Forums, the gaming company informed all gamers that their engineers are already working to get the game back up.
"We are currently aware of a DDoS attack that is currently affecting stability across all games," Galxigrav, Overwatch's support forum agent, said. "Our network engineers are working on addressing the issue and resolving the attack as quickly as possible."
For people who does not know what DDoS is, it is the acronym for Distributed Denial of Service. It is one of those DOS attacks where the systems are compromised, mostly through infecting it with a Trojan.
A hacking group called PoodleCorp bared on social media that they were the ones who attacked Blizzard. On their Twitter account, they simply wrote, "(EU & US) Blizzard #Offline #PoodleCorp @BlizzardCS." The group was the same hacking team that brought down servers of "Pokemon Go" the past weekend.
Wth the admission, it was assumed that the attacks were carried out as revenge after Blizzard issued bans for "Overwatch." Many players were banned over the weekend because they were found to be using bots to advance in the game. Reportedly, some of the shunned individuals are from PoodleCorp.
Finally, for the latest update on this incident, most of the issues have been resolved. Blizzard assured players that they will continue to monitor and work to fix the remaining minor glitches.
