30 september 2021

Hackers Bombarded Final Fantasy XIV European Servers 

On the night of August 14, 2021, Final Fantasy 14 players could not enjoy the game, because the European servers were subjected to a massive DDoS attack. Square Enix, which is a Japanese video game company, confirmed the issue. ‘We are currently experiencing technical difficulties due to a DDoS attack’, the official website said.

To attack the server hackers typically use a lot of compromised personal computers. This involves creating multiple requests to the servers. As a result, the server cannot handle the load and fail.

There is nothing fundamentally new in such an attack because DDOS attacks are often subjected to game servers, websites of private individuals, and government organizations.
Instead of waiting, Square Enix took massive action to investigate what was going on and to take countermeasures. 

In just twelve hours, an update was presented which made EU servers recover from the attack.
Square Enix later reported that players couldn’t log in and transfer data to servers.

Worth mentioning that this DDoS attack targeted only the game servers located in the European Union. The total number of them is twelve. There are over fifty more servers in Japan and North America.

Reddit users are always active when it comes to discussing these kinds of issues. Some players reported losing entire weeks of free time. 

The technical difficulties experienced by users during the forced downtime can be divided into three categories:

• Inability to log in to servers located in European Union;
• Inability to access, send and receive data from European data servers;
• No connection at all with European servers.

The attack began at 7:45 a.m. and lasted almost the entire working day.

At 2:40 p.m., according to Nichegame.com, log-in queues of over eight hundred players were seen.

According to other reports, at certain points in the day, the queue was up to 2,000 people. 
It is noteworthy that the reports about inaccessibility, which were spread by the media, fueled interest, so people who hadn't played the game for a long time tried to log in to their accounts making things even worse.

There is nothing new about popular game servers being attacked by hackers. In particular, players of Final Fantasy 14 periodically experience such difficulties. Three years ago Reddit users discussed who and why had been DDOSing the servers for the past few months.

The answer was not found then, nor is it found now.

Game developing companies often experience multiple attacks. The motivation of hackers remains unclear in many cases. Typically such cyber events entail availability issues, latency, and downtime for long hours and even days or weeks.

Final Fantasy XIV has been known for quite a long time as one of the most popular MMORPG games in the world. 

Experienced players understand that such attacks are evidence of the popularity of the game, so usually after solving the problems the number of active players does not decrease. A favorite game remains a favorite game, despite temporary difficulties.

Considering the fact that Square Enix immediately acknowledged the attack and found a solution, we can say that the players were not only properly supported but also respected!