The International Suffers from DDoS Attacks

Turns out, Gamescom (an event I’ve personally reported very little on, actually) isn’t the only big gaming event happening this week: The International, the world finals for this season of DOTA 2 competitive play, is also happening, and gosh darn it the action is so intense it can’t even be contained on the screen.

Well, on the second day of the action, a certain buzzkill decided to ruin the fun of thousands and thousands of excited spectators by launching a DDoS attack on DOTA 2 while the international was in full swing, with Evil Geniuses duking it out against Complexity. The resulting lag and crashes caused a forfeit, and eventually a three hour delay while Valve tried to sort that mess out.

The games have since resumed and, obviously, have been finished. We can only hope there’s not a second attack today as well.

It’s not surprising that DOTA 2 was subjected to attacks by a grade-A digital douche, but what is surprising is how they hadn’t learned their lesson already from League of Legends: another MOBA whose own second world finals were interrupted by lag and attacks they had to make their own Network for the sole purpose of competitive play. I kind of figured Valve would have done the same thing by now, but… well… if they aren’t working on it now, they’re going to be working on it soon.