Players attempting to access Blizzard Entertainment's various games, especially Diablo 4, were met with unfortunate news as they couldn't log in due to persistent consistent issues. Apparently, Blizzard's Battle.net, the launcher housing its myriad of titles, was recently the target of an ongoing Distributed Denial of Service attack, more commonly known as DDoS.
Players hoping to grind through the rest of the weekend found their progress halted abruptly, with Blizzard saying "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 official announcement from Blizzard came as disappointed gamers across multiple genres, including World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2, as they lost hours of their chance to immerse themselves in their favorite games before starting another a new work week. However, the consequences of the DDoS attack appear to have hit Diablo 4 players the hardest, albeit it's probably only because it's one of the most-played games at the moment.
[#D4] We are investigating the login issues affecting Diablo IV and working to resolve these as soon as possible. Players may experience queues while we work on the issue.
— Blizzard CS - The Americas (@BlizzardCS) June 25, 2023
On the Diablo 4 front, users have been confronted with error messages stating "unable to find a valid license," reinforcing the scale of the disruption and its severity.
Unsurprisingly, the always vocal Diablo 4 community has voiced their discontent with the ongoing issues, as it remained inaccessible for hours. A thread started by user TheOGMac on the Blizzard forums documenting their inability to connect quickly snowballed as more players chimed in about their similar experiences, leading to an outpouring of user frustration.
Addressing the situation, Blizzard took to Twitter to provide insights into the problem. "We're currently investigating an issue affecting our authentication servers, which may result in failed or slow login attempts," the company announced, shedding light on the root of the issue. However, it stopped short of providing an estimate on when normal service will be resumed, leaving players in the lurch.
But, it appears Blizzard speedrun through the problem as it confirmed that things should be back to normal already hours after the problem came to light.
Unfortunately, the incident has brought to light the vulnerabilities faced by major gaming platforms and the implications of such attacks on live-service titles.
It remains to be seen if this is the last time Diablo 4 will fall victim to a DDoS attack as its launch month ends or if this will be the first of many.
Blizzard's open communication with the Diablo 4 community has been commendable, to say the least. Prior to the disruption, Blizzard has constantly kept players in the loop, promising big updates coming to Diablo 4 albeit not all of them have been well-received. It's also not above taking notes from the community, listening to feedback from long-time fans, and addressing problems as they come up. It even finds time to troll fans with hidden levels as well as an "unannounced" post-credits scene that has the community speculating about what's coming to Diablo 4 as part of its two in-development expansions.
As Diablo's first foray into the live-service genre, it's important Blizzard stay on top of things and judging from the initial impressions, it certainly seems like the development team knows what they're doing with Diablo 4.
Now, all that's left to do is for Diablo 4 to maintain the momentum from its best-selling launch ever and make billions in revenue for Blizzard.
