Blizzard spent much of Sunday battling a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that rendered Diablo 4 unplayable for hours.
Players began to report issues signing into the always-online action role-playing game as well as other Battle.net games on Saturday night, and login problems persisted into Sunday morning. Blizzard’s customer support Twitter account revealed the source of the problem: a DDoS attack it was “actively working to mitigate”.
The issue was so bad a warning message was added to Battle.net itself. It wasn’t until Sunday evening the same Twitter account declared the DDoS attack over, although it did not specify whether Blizzard mitigated the attack, the people behind the attack simply stopped their action, or a combination of both.
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
As you'd expect, fans expressed their frustration across social media and in online forums. “Over 12 hours for me,” wrote redditor LethalBacon. “Was hoping to play a few hours on a Saturday night after working ~10 hours. Nope. No worries, it'll be up Sunday morning! Nope. S**t happens, but it's frustrating.”
While DDoS attacks like this one can strike any developer and any video game at any time, it is a stark reminder of Blizzard’s controversial decision to make Diablo 4 an always-online game, and has sparked renewed calls for the addition of an offline mode. Diablo 4 has been rendered unplayable due to login issues multiple times since its launch earlier in June, with disconnections and other problems causing the tragic death of Hardcore characters as they approach or hit the level cap of 100.
“The problem is this wouldn't be a problem if the game had a f**king single-player mode that didn't require an internet connection,” redditor Astray said. “Always-online video games are terrible for a multitude of reasons.”
Diablo 4 features lite-MMO elements that enable player-versus-player combat, shared social spaces and party-based dungeon crawling. Blizzard has said it is a big fan of these elements, and encourages occasional unplanned interactions between players.
Earlier in June, the first Diablo 4 player to hit Level 100 in Hardcore mode was left speechless after his character was lost forever following a disconnect. Then, last week, a Diablo 4 player flew into a rage after his 172-hour, level 91 Hardcore character died during a loading screen.
Diablo 4 launched big, becoming Blizzard’s fastest-selling game ever. It is also a hit with critics, and, generally, has gone down well with fans. However, the cost of Diablo 4’s microtransactions has raised eyebrows, and, surprisingly, Whoopi Goldberg called on Blizzard to release Diablo 4 on Mac.
Check out our interactive Diablo 4 map to start tracking your progress as you play.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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