Unable to Play Overwatch 2? Blizzard President Blames It on a DDOS Attack

It seems Sombra has hacked Overwatch 2's servers just in time for the game's launch.

Blizzard president Mike Ybarra mentioned in a Twitter post that Overwatch 2's servers are experiencing a mass distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, preventing new and veteran Overwatch 2 players from entering the game on its launch day.

Overwatch 2 was released to the public on Oct. 4 at 3 PM EDT, with more than 10 million players hopping into the game to see what's new as of press time, per Active Player.

Overwatch 2 DDoS Attack Details

Overwatch 2, Blizzard Entertainment's "upgrade" to its hit 2016 6v6 team-based shooter, was released to a crowd of gamers waiting excitedly to try the game out on launch day.

However, Kotaku reported that there are numerous reports of gamers being unable to play the game due to long wait lines. Some players have even said they are waiting behind tens of thousands of players before they can get in.

Those who do manage to get in mentioned that Overwatch 2 has missing cosmetics, match histories, and buggy cameras when playing the game.

If Ybarra's tweets are to be believed, Blizzard became aware of the problem an hour after the game was launched. According to his tweet at the time, Blizzard's teams were working hard on the server issues to identify the cause of the problem.

Ybarra then gave an update on the issue, saying that the game's servers are experiencing a DDoS Attack, which is preventing players from getting into the game on time.

For those unaware, a DDoS attack is a technique wherein a hacker overwhelms the server of a website or platform with fake traffic using a botnet to make it unavailable to legitimate users, per Imperva.

Bugs on a newly launched game like missing cosmetics and match history are par for the course in the gaming industry, but to have its servers DDoS'ed or hacked on launch day is another.

Forbes mentioned in its article that the server issue started earlier in the morning of Oct. 4 Pacific Time but only became apparent around noon of the same day, probably due to the gradual increase of players trying to get into the game.

Ybarra mentioned in his tweet that BNlizzard's teams are already working hard to mitigate or manage the issue, but a quick check on Down Detector shows that the end isn't in sight just yet, with the website logging 17 reports as of press time.

When Will Servers Be Up Again?

Despite Ybarra's announcement, there is still no sign of Overwatch 2's servers recovering from the DDoS attack. Blizzard's official Customer Support Twitter page for the Americas has yet to report that the problem is resolved, and it could be sometime before the game's servers perform as intended.

Our advice is to check Down Detector every so often, as well as Blizzard's Customer Support for its American servers, to see if the DDoS attack is gone or at least mitigated.