Gamers who had been anxiously awaiting the release of Battlefield Hardline finally got their hands on the game yesterday, but if you’re playing the Xbox One version, you might find you’re having trouble hopping online. It’s not a bug or your Internet connection: That version of the game is currently the target of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
This type of attack is the result of a massive amount of computers — usually in the thousands — trying to connect to a service or website at once. These attacks surrounding the launches of popular games are becoming more common. The Warlords of Draenor expansion released last November for World of Warcraft was also the target of such an attack.
Both the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live were hit by DDoS attacks starting on Christmas day of last year, and PSN remained down for three days afterward. This eventually led the arrest of a U.K. man in connection with the attacks.
Battlefield Hardline developer Visceral Games is aware of the attack and working to fix it. A statement on the game’s Twitter feed reads “We’ve identified the connectivity issues on Xbox One are due to DDoS attack and working to resolve. Apologies for the inconvenience.”
At the time of this writing, the attacks are still taking place and Visceral has not yet set an ETA on when the issues will be resolved. There are currently no reports of issues with the PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 or Xbox 360 versions of the game.
Unlike many recent game launches, Battlefield Hardline seemed to be relatively free of issues from the outset, so this attack will be particularly frustrating to gamers hoping to get a few early rounds in today.
