Overwatch 2’s launch issues being made worse by DDoS attack

Overwatch 2 launched earlier this evening, prompting the traditional New Blizzard Game Experience of thousands of players waiting in long queues to play. According to president of Blizzard Entertainment Mike Ybarra, however, today’s launch issues are being made worse by a “mass DDoS attack” on their servers.

Ybarra tweeted about the launch earlier this evening, saying that they were “working hard on server issues” and that they were humbled by the attention. He then followed up to write that, “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.”

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. https://t.co/4GwrfHEiBE

— Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) October 4, 2022

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A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt an internet server by directing an overwhelming amount of traffic at it. These kinds of attacks have existed for decades and continue to become more sophisticated to evade attempts to protect against them.

Blizzard have experienced several DDoS attacks over the years, and more broadly are no stranger to launch issues involving servers and queue times. Diablo 2 Resurrected’s servers kept falling over long after release, for example.

Overwatch 2 is a free-to-player sequel to the 2016 original, although Ollie found it felt more like a content update than a full sequel in his Overwatch 2 review in progress.