Battlefield 1 Beta Brought Down By DDoS Attack

The beta of Battlefield 1 [official site] was shut down on its first day by a group pummeling EA’s servers with a denial of service attack. And if you hopped off to play some Overwatch or WoW instead, you might have encountered an identical problem, because the same group has been attacking Blizzard’s servers as well. It is as if a dozen gaming forums losing millions of passwords recently in a separate hack was not bad enough.

The Battlefield 1 beta launched yesterday but within hours players were unable to join servers or find a game through matchmaking. We had the same problem when we tried last night, getting in just two matches amid a flurry of error messages and disconnections. EA didn't acknowledge an attack but did admit that they were having problems. Meanwhile, the hacking group PoodleCorp claimed they were responsible.

The group has also been attacking the Blizzard servers, bringing lag and disconnections to players of Overwatch and World of Warcraft - all on the same day the MMO’s sixth expansion, Legion, was launched. Those issues have since been resolved, say Blizzard. Likewise, the Battlefield 1 servers look a lot healthier today.

The hacks are reminiscent of Lizard Squad, a hacking group that previously attacked Sony, Microsoft, Valve and others using the same method, most famously on Christmas Day in 2014, disrupting online games and forcing millions to spend time with their families. It's not known if any more bombardments are planned, but this probably isn't the last we've seen of the group. If all continues going smoothly, we'll be able to bring you our impressions of Battlefield 1 multiplayer soon. Or, if you're very impatient, you can try it yourself on Origin.