Complaints from gamers regarding “Diablo IV” and other games developed by Blizzard Entertainment have been widespread. The issue began when the customer service team reported downtime on Sunday, confirming that a DDoS attack was the cause. This extended outage significantly impacted Blizzard, which lasted several hours, depriving gamers of their precious weekend playtime.

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Through their official Twitter account, Blizzard’s customer service team promptly notified the public about the initial problems. At 1:53 AM on Sunday, they announced that a login issue was affecting various games, including Diablo IV. However, gamers had yet to learn that this problem would escalate and consume their entire Sunday. This was revealed as subsequent updates delivered unfortunate news.

The staff had to explain the disruption precisely, even though it had been eight hours since the confirmation.

At 10:24 AM Eastern Time, Blizzard finally acknowledged that the problem—which affected the games’ connectivity and latency—was actually a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. 

They announced that they had stopped the attack at 1 PM, allowing players to log in again. However, they had not yet completed the trial.

A second tweet from Blizzard many hours later reported yet another continuous DDoS attack.

On that particular Sunday, Blizzard Entertainment either went through two DDoS assaults or just partially recovered from the first one.

On a positive note, just 30 minutes later, the company declared that users could try logging in again. This announcement came after the attack had concluded.

Numerous gamers expressed their frustration on Reddit, claiming to have lost up to 10 to 12 hours of gaming time. Some experienced shorter or longer wait times before Diablo IV returned to normal operations.

DDoS attacks threaten various industries, and recent reports indicate a rising trend in the financial sector, with a 22 percent year-over-year increase as of November last year. The Financial Services Data Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) suggests that these attacks could be a precursor to more significant issues, such as malware and espionage.

DDoS assaults are becoming more frequent, and the most recent one targeted Blizzard Entertainment’s services, particularly its games and Battle.net portal. Thankfully, after several hours, the customer service team confirmed that the problem had been resolved and encouraged users to log in to their services and games, including the recently released Diablo IV.