Diablo 4: DDoS Attack Reveals Game's Biggest Problem

Diablo 4 was hit by a DDoS attack on Sunday, making the entire game unplayable for everyone. This caused fans to again ask for an offline mode.

Diablo 4 Lilith angry — Diablo 4 was hit by a DDoS attack, which made the game unplayable for hours. | © Blizzard

Diablo 4 was unplayable for most of Sunday, June 25, as players couldn’t log into the servers of the always-online ARPG. This was later confirmed to be due to a DDoS attack, which overloaded Blizzard’s servers and made it impossible to play the game.

This obviously upset the player base, which once again asked the question: Why doesn’t this game have an offline-mode?

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Diablo 4 DDoS Attack Provokes Questions About Always-Online Requirement

Everyone who tried to play Diablo 4 on Sunday… couldn’t. Instead, players were constantly disconnected or didn’t manage to get into the game at all. These issues apparently lasted for 12 hours. Eventually, an in-game message explained the situation:

“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.“

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Players did not take kindly to this downtime and social media was obviously filled with complaints, outrage, and memes. By far the biggest post in a while on the game’s subreddit poked fun at the always-online situation of the game and the issues that this carries with it:

Posted this 11 years ago, sadly still relevant by u/regisfrost in diablo4

Since the first beta, players have begged Blizzard to include an offline mode for Diablo 4 and this is the main reason why. Of course, this incident isn’t the fault of the developers. But issues like these are always likely to happen and will always be to the detriment of the players.

Diablo 4 D Do S Attack Error Message — Diablo 4 players were greeted by this message when trying to log into the game. | © Blizzard

A lot of people play the game on their own and that player base frankly doesn’t care about the new online-elements of the game. However, if they just want to play their solo adventure, they can’t if the servers are down. And this will surely not be the last time that Diablo 4 will experience an involuntary downtime like this.

Diablo 3 already had massive issues due to being always-online, but kept the online requirement throughout. The sequel is showing once again why always-online requirements suck.