EA’s hugely anticipated Battlefield 1 launched its open beta last night, but while some managed to get a bit of game time in, the servers fell over at one point.
Gamers were quick to berate EA as the cause of the outage, but hacker group PoodleCorp claimed responsibility, presumably through a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
The upcoming attacks are powered by https://t.co/ZEP4cOhXqA #PoodleCorp
— PoodleCorp (@PoodleCorp) August 31, 2016
We are responsible for the downtime of @EA & @Battlefield #PoodleCorp
— PoodleCorp (@PoodleCorp) August 31, 2016
According to an update sent out by EA during the outage, it became apparently that a host of the developer’s games were suffering some downtime.
“EA is currently experiencing an outage. EA games, services, and support may be impacted. We’re working to resolve as fast as possible,” it said on its Twitter feed.
EA says its services came back online at around 5:30am SA time, but we’ve had some difficulty logging into Origin this morning so perhaps EA’s woes aren’t over quite yet.
EA games & services are available. Support wait times may still be impacted. For 1×1 assistance, please contact us: https://t.co/5ruQb6pQ7D
— EA Support (@AskEASupport) September 1, 2016
PoodleCorp tweeted that they’d stop DDoSing EA only when interviewed by @KEEMSTAR, one of YouTube’s biggest stars who has over 1.4 million subscribers.
@KEEMSTAR obliged out of irritation at being unable to play Battlefield 1, and about eight hours ago the DDoS was stopped.
Battlefield is no longer being attacked thanks to @KEEMSTAR #PoodleCorp
— PoodleCorp (@PoodleCorp) August 31, 2016
The open beta is available for PC, Xbox and PS4, and the full game launches on 21st October. As it’s one of the year’s big game launches and the Battlefield audience is huge, it’s no surprise the beta attracted the attention of a hacker group.
The game takes place during World War 1, but just how accurate is it? Our own Clinton Matos did a bit of analysis, comparing the trailers to actual scenarios and events earlier this month.
“While the trailer has some spot-on details (like the way artillery shells pile up after use), it does contain a lot of inaccuracies. This can be chalked up to artistic licence from developer DICE,” he wrote.
You can read his full piece here.
