Diablo 4 DDoS Attack Explained

Only those who actively play role-playing games will know the importance of investing time and energy to get through the main story. Diablo 4 has been the recipient of raving reviews since its launch on 6th June 2023 but the game has been having its fair share of network and server-side issues, preventing players from progressing further within the game. On 25th June, due to a chain of DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks, Blizzard servers were troubled. Players criticized the “always-online” requirement for Diablo 4 and stated that it is a predicament. Notably, many players were reportedly unable to access the game for over 12 hours.

A message on Diablo 4’s main menu screen confirmed the DDoS attack on 25th June. Here’s all we know about it.

Diablo 4: Always-Online Requirement & DDoS Attacks

Firstly, it is important to know that Diablo 4 always requires gamers to play online. In prior iterations of the game, players were allowed the opportunity to play the game offline, but with a limitation: characters created in offline mode could not be carried over to online sessions.

However, Diablo 4 requires players to always be connected and stay online. This is one of the major reasons why a lot of players face server issues and disconnections from this always-online action RPG during the highest traffic periods of the week: Saturday and Sunday.

On 25th June (Sunday), when the Blizzard servers were victim to DDoS attacks, players could not clock in important game time and this enraged a lot of them. As a result, players have been criticizing and calling out the game’s always-online model, stating that it should not be a requirement with most of them looking to grind at their own pace and time. 

If you are unfamiliar with what a DDoS attack is, it simply is a type of cyber attack that is caused when a system is flooded with interactions so that actual users cannot use or access the intended service.

Earlier on 25th June, before confirming the DDoS attack, Blizzard’s customer service handle tweeted, “We are investigating the login issues affecting Diablo IV and working to resolve these as soon as possible.”

Following this, players were greeted by the following message inside the game:

“BREAKING NEWS: We are currently experiencing a DDoS attack, which may result in high latency and disconnections for some players. We are actively working to mitigate this issue.”

By the end of the day, the company announced that the DDoS attacks that it was monitoring have ended and asked players to troubleshoot their connections if their problems persisted.

If you are experiencing trouble logging into the game’s server, you should head to the official Battle.net support page to find out what the cause of the connection issue is. Apart from Blizzard’s support page, you can also check out Blizzard's Customer Service handle to stay on top of what’s happening at the developers’ end.

Players should note that on 26th June 2023, Blizzard has scheduled this week’s maintenance between 9 am IST and 2 pm IST. Diablo 4 will remain unavailable during this time.