The Thanksgiving Holiday weekend is a special time for gamers. Days off from work and school means more time to dedicate to playing their favorite games without pesky life interruptions. Unfortunately for Call of Duty and other players of Activision Blizzard games, the weekend has started rough as the Battle.net servers suffered a DDoS attack.
The Blizzard Customer Support Twitter account sent out a tweet that claimed that Battle.net servers were under a DDoS attack late Wednesday afternoon. Activity on Down Detector showed a large spike in outages that started around 6 PM EST. Players were made aware of the situation via the tweet at around 6:35 PM. The DDoS attack unfortunately coincides with Call of Duty: Vanguard's Double XP weekend, meaning valuable time dedicated to grinding out levels and cosmetics are being lost. The attack also affected World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Hearthstone, and other Activision Blizzard properties.
The attack has seemingly subsided as the Blizzard Customer Support account posted an update around an hour later stating that the attack ended. Information from Down Detector shows the outage report spike dissipating almost as quickly as it began at around 7:30 EST. The outage reports are currently a bit higher than it was before the attack, so there is some residual damage, but it seems that Battle.net servers are back to normal as of writing. In the 7:30 tweet, Blizzard Customer Service shared a troubleshooting link for any players still experiencing issues.
Fans are both upset and nonchalant in regards to the attack. Some are obviously frustrated that a company as massive as Activision Blizzard is not immune nor can do a better job at defending its servers from DDoS attacks. Others are borderline overjoyed and calling the attacks part of retribution following the latest scandal involving Activision CEO Bobby Kotick and the Board of Directors that refuse to oust him.
There have been no reports of any zealous hacker groups claiming responsibility for the attack as of yet. Some replies on Twitter poked fun at the company, saying it was the return of Lizard Squad, an infamous hacker group most known for the 2011 Sony hack. Another reply want to believe its the Call of Duty: Warzone hackers EngineOwning taking aim at the company because of the impending release of the Ricocchet anti-cheat program.
Either way, fans are upset that the were mildly inconvenienced during the Call of Duty: Vanguard Double XP weekend, and Activision Blizzard programmers were unfortunately called in during the company-wide weeklong holiday break.
Call of Duty: Vanguard is out now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.