Activision Blizzard stated on Twitter Wednesday that its Battle.net service was ailing from a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. A little over an hour later, it reported that its monitoring attacks had ended.
While they were happening, Activision Blizzard said the DDoS attacks ‘might result in high latency and disconnections for some players’
In the initial tweet, sent at 7:11 PM ET from the @BlizzardCS Twitter account, the company warned that the attack “may result in high latency and disconnections for some players.” That first tweet noted a special episode, but a second one reported that things had concluded, sent at 8:29 PM ET, referenced plural attacks.
Based on user notifications on Downdetector, players were having problems with games including World of Warcraft, Call of Duty (though exactly which title isn’t specified), Overwatch, and Diablo III.
Battle.net experienced DDoS attacks for about an hour in November, which caused players to try to play games.
Battle.net is an Internet-based online game, digital distribution, social networking service, and digital rights management platform conceived by Blizzard Entertainment. The service was undertaken on December 31, 1996, and tracked a few days later by Blizzard’s Diablo, an action-role-playing video game, on January 3, 1997. Battle.net was officially renamed “Blizzard Battle.net” in August 2017, with the change being reverted in January 2021.
Battle.net was the top online gaming service integrated directly into the games that use it, in contrast to the external interfaces employed by the other online services. This feature, along with ease of account creation and the absence of member expenditure and fees, caused Battle.net to become famous among gamers and became a central selling point for Diablo and succeeding Blizzard games.
Since the victorious launch of Battle.net, many companies have assembled online game services mocking Blizzard’s service package and the user interface.
Blizzard Entertainment officially revealed the revamped Battle.net 2.0 on March 20, 2009. It later disclosed additional components of the Battle.net updated features at BlizzCon 2009, which supported StarCraft II, World of Warcraft, and Diablo III.
The original Battle.net was then renamed Battle.net Classic. Battle.net Classic games employ a different account system than Battle.net 2.0.
The platform currently supports storefront actions, social interactions, and matchmaking for all of Blizzard’s modern PC games, including Overwatch, StarCraft: Remastered, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, as well as various Call of Duty games, and Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time from a corporate sibling of Blizzard Entertainment, Activision. Additionally, the platform provides cross-game instant messaging and voice chat services.
In September 2017, Blizzard Entertainment released the Battle.net application for Android and iOS. The app includes the ability to chat with and add friends and see what games they are currently playing.