'Modern Warfare' Was Temporarily Down Due to a DDoS Attack
Updated June 3 2020, 1:41 p.m. ET
Those looking to spend their afternoons playing round after round of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare found themselves unable to access the game as the servers were down.
Players were understandably frustrated as Blizzard, the company behind Modern Warfare, announced they were experiencing a DDoS attack, causing the problems with their servers.
Blizzard isn’t the first company to have to deal with lagging servers as gamers all over the world are turning to video games to fill their spare time.
What is a DDoS attack?
A DDoS attack, or a distributed denial-of-service, means hackers are flooding the servers with fake connections, overloading it so players can’t connect to the game. It’s likely the hackers are attacking more than one server, explaining how many players have been unable to log on.
Blizzard addressed the attack on their Twitter, informing their followers that they may be unable to log on while they sort out the issue.
“[#Bnet] We are currently experiencing a DDoS attack, which may result in high latency and disconnections for some players. We are actively working to mitigate this issue.,” the company tweeted on June 2.
This isn’t the first time Blizzard has had to deal with a DDoS attack since the COVID-19 lockdown started. On March 18, shortly after most of the country had issued stay-at-home orders, they experienced a similar problem, and most players were unable to connect to the servers.
Just over an hour later, the company tweeted again that they had resolved the issues and players could resume playing, though some of the replies indicated players were still struggling to connect to the Modern Warfare servers.
The attack also affected the games’ login times, preventing players from accessing their accounts.
“Players may be experiencing latency or disconnections. We are investigating this now,” Blizzard tweeted. Within the hour, the company declared the issue had been resolved. “The login issues have been resolved. Thanks for your patience and sorry for any inconvenience.”
For players who were still experiencing problems, the gaming company recommended they follow the connection troubleshooting steps on their website, including resetting your network devices and ensuring your internet connection was optimized for the device you’re using.
The attack also affected other games created by Blizzard.
While Modern Warfare seemed to be hit the hardest, it seems other games also managed by Blizzard had issues with their servers. Gamers who also tried to access other Blizzard titles, specifically Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and the free CoD game Warzone also were unable to access the servers.
Players experienced trouble logging in to play, waiting in queues that sometimes took hours to get through.
They expressed their displeasure in the replies to Blizzard’s updates, sharing screenshots of their wait times and declaring they were still having problems accessing the games.
It is unclear at this time where the DDoS attack originated from, though it appears as though the servers are back up and running and players can resume playing their favorite Blizzard games without interruption.
