‘Battlefield 4’ Servers Under Fire As DDOS Attack Takes Them Down
The Battlefield 4 servers have suffered an assault all their own this last weekend as a DDoS attack rendered them unusable. The multiplayer-friendly war game was basically downgraded to a single-player “snafu” as gamers were unable to even log in.
DDoS (distributed denial of service) refers to a form of hacking in which the server is unable to connect to user accounts, therefore making it appear as if they don’t exist. Combine this with multiplayer online games, especially one as popular as Battlefield 4, and you end up with a single-player game by default where you’re forced to use AI as your teammates and opponents.
Back in the old days with the Nintendo 64 console, AI multiplayer wasn’t such a bad idea. Perfect Dark and the ill-fate Turok made it work quite well. In the case of the latter, it was one of the only things the game got right. These days, having to rely on the option of AI multiplayer is unacceptable unless the gamer is just a lone wolf to begin with or the network is down.
That’s what happened with the Battlefield 4 servers this weekend. After the launch of the PS4, the once PC-specific message for gamers announced, “We are currently experiencing attacks on our infrastructure that is impacting online gameplay on BF4 PC. We are working on mitigating actions.”
The PS4 hardware issues that came with the console’s launch were bad enough, but now one of its launch titles isn’t working like it should. Hackers have ruined the game for everybody, and forced many gamers to turn to Call of Duty: Ghosts for their first-person shooter fix.
DICE struggles against DDOS attacks and severe crashes in Battlefield 4 – http://t.co/6zvPDxHF0e
— Eurogamer.net (@eurogamer) November 18, 2013
DICE is still working on a solution, and has posted another message for gamers, “We are being targeted by a DDOS, but working on fixing it ASAP. I’m sorry somebody is ruining your and my day. Rest assured we are doing our best to mitigate the situation though.”
It is unknown why anyone would go out of their way to hack into the Battlefield 4 servers and cause a DDoS attack, but rest assured that DICE is trying to fix it.
