A hot potato: While the majority of players and critics have praised Diablo 4, one of the more controversial aspects of the game is the always-online requirement. It generated a lot of talk again over the weekend when a DDoS attack stopped people from logging into the ARPG for hours.
On Sunday morning, Blizzard tweeted that it was actively monitoring an ongoing DDoS attack that was affecting latency and connections to its games.
Players of Battle.net titles, including Overwatch 2, had been reporting problems before the announcement, but it was the massively popular, live service Diablo 4 that received the most tweets, posts, and forum replies. One Redditor wrote that they were unable to access the game for over 12 hours. The complaints thread is aptly titled 6hrs+ downtime in a liveservice game by a multibillion $ company.
Whomever DDoS #Diablo4 you are garbage people. You are what is wrong with this world and gaming Community. pic.twitter.com/44zk63YobO
– Paul - Twitch UrbanPharaoh / YouTube Pharaoh TV (@Pharaoh_tv) June 25, 2023
This isn't the first time Diablo 4's always-online nature has caused problems. When the game went live for those who didn't have early access, the flood of new players resulted in wait times of over an hour for some people, this writer included. There have been similar instances since then, too.
Blizzard put a breaking news announcement about the attack on Battle.net, announcing the latency and disconnection problems and promising that it was trying to mitigate the issue. The company confirmed the attack had ended later on Sunday without revealing if those responsible had simply stopped, whether it was due to some action on Blizzard's part, or who was behind the incident. The attack was likely timed to impact the highest possible number of Battle.net players.
[#Bnet] The DDOS attacks that we were monitoring have ended. If you are still unable to log in try https://t.co/NY39q2slWo
– Blizzard CS - The Americas (@BlizzardCS) June 25, 2023
The DDoS attack has once again led to calls for Diablo 4 to have a single-player offline mode so users can still play the game during incidents like this one. It's likely a feature that those who aren't interested in some of the online elements such as world events, or anyone with spotty internet connections, would appreciate
Earlier this month, we heard that Blizzard is already working on two expansions for Diablo 4. It was also revealed that it became Blizzard's fastest-selling game in under 24 hours.