Overwatch 2, the recently launched and highly anticipated sequel to Blizzard’s team shooter game, started its journey with a major distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. 

According to multiple media reports, many players wanting to give the new game a shot were met with a message saying 'Game server connection failed...retrying'.

While it was first thought the server issues were related to an outpouring of interest from the community, the truth was later confirmed by Blizzard to be somewhat more sinister.

All hands on deck

In an update to fans on Twitter, Blizzard’s president Mike Ybarra first said: “Teams are working hard on server issues with Overwatch 2. We are humbled by the excitement of players and will continue to focus on issues and get players into the fun! Thanks for your patience.” 

However, an hour later, Ybarra confirmed that server issues were, in fact, the result of a cyberattack: “Unfortunately we are experiencing a mass DDoS attack on our servers. Teams are working hard to mitigate/manage. This is causing a lot of drop/connection issues.”

The latest update came from Overwatch 2 game director, Aaron Keller. “We’re steadily making progress on server issues and stability, as well as working through a second DDoS attack,” he tweeted. “We’re all hands on deck and will continue to work throughout the night. Thank you for your patience - we’ll share more info as it becomes available.”

While the DDoS attack seems to be causing quite the disruption, not everyone is affected. As reported by The Verge, there are many streamers on Twitch who have managed to log in and are streaming Overwatch 2 games to their audience,

Overwatch 2 is a first-person shooter developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Even though it’s advertised as a direct sequel to the original 2016 Overwatch game, many reviewers consider it more of a remix, rather than a straight-up sequel.

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Via: The Verge