Here is why I don't believe it's a DDOS attack.

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CloudSP12#3948 wrote:

Ddos for 7 Days in a row? Yeah ofc and the Earth is flat and Santa is real.
Maybe they are Just the Most useless company to exist. Finally the Diablo devs can be Happy because they are Not the worst anymore.

DDOS attacks are sustainable for weeks and even months at a time. Don't comment in things you don't understand.

Okay but why is only GGG getting ddos attacks for weeks and Not EA, Blizzard or Ubisoft? They all have plenty of haters. Maybe its because they all found ways to Protect the Servers? Meanwhile GGG is Not willing to do anything and Just ignores the Problem.

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Seebeu#0209 wrote:

I think it's Empyrian and his juicing team causing mass lag due to all the mega RIZZ they do on their maps. GGG's servers can't handle it.

I wouldn't go so far and call out just one guy, but yeah it is likely the reason and the rmt industry gives extra motivation to grind it out that hard in groups.

That would also explain why it doesn't happen like that in other games that don't have a trade system like poe has which can be exploited like that.

Guys this is bullshit, game is literally unplayable right now 16:05 GMT time, wtf is going on? Are you going to give us a free lootbox for all the lost time / items or what is the compensation here?

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CloudSP12#3948 wrote:

Okay but why is only GGG getting ddos attacks for weeks and Not EA, Blizzard or Ubisoft? They all have plenty of haters.

Just because you don't hear about it doesn't mean it isn't happening. Square Enix (FFXI and FFXIV) is suffering from DDOS all the time, since you're looking for comparison with other large companies.

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CloudSP12#3948 wrote:

Maybe its because they all found ways to Protect the Servers?

You can't protect your servers against DDOS. You can mitigate it but never fully prevent it.

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CloudSP12#3948 wrote:

GGG is Not willing to do anything and Just ignores the Problem.

They openly communicated what is happening and acknowledged the issue. What do you want them to do, call you and give you an update every other hour?

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Crîmnor#4334 wrote:

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CloudSP12#3948 wrote:

Maybe its because they all found ways to Protect the Servers?

You can't protect your servers against DDOS. You can mitigate it but never fully prevent it.

Game instance crashes are something they can (near) 100% prevent with a proper system design.
And if they would use big cloud computing provider properly (like AWS) they could also for most practical purposes protect themselves from other symptoms (supposedly) caused by DDoS with proper setup and coding.


Edit: Added "Game" to make it clear that this is about in-game instances.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/cloudflare-blocks-record-73-tbps-ddos-attack-against-hosting-provider/

Interesting reading.

Edit: And not saying this is related to anything happening with GGG. This is just for those interested in these kinds of things, and for some who might understand what DDOS is better after reading that. DDOS is not fun.

Hi! I just came here to ask if servers are fixed yet but I guess they aren't. That's quite sad :(

The problem with all of this is simply that it doesn't explain why servers become vastly more stable when the player numbers go down, and vastly more unstable when player numbers go up. I can literally see it happen in-game during EU peak hours in the evening (~18:00-02:00h). If it isn't a "load balancing" issue as others described, then how come the "DDOS" always seems to go nuts around those times? You think it's someone from EU who only DDOSes the servers after they get home from work? Sounds quite realistic.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

The problem with all of this is simply that it doesn't explain why servers become vastly more stable when the player numbers go down, and vastly more unstable when player numbers go up. I can literally see it happen in-game during EU peak hours in the evening (~18:00-02:00h). If it isn't a "load balancing" issue as others described, then how come the "DDOS" always seems to go nuts around those times? You think it's someone from EU who only DDOSes the servers after they get home from work? Sounds quite realistic.

Spot on.

Speaking from the perspective of a server engineer, who looks after various businesses infrastructures at a datacentre, the situation is very clear.

GGG does not want to put themselves in a position where the only option they have is to publicly acknowledge the following:

> "We're aware of player count increases, and we're also aware that within a month these numbers will go down and server stability, to a fashion, will return. With this in mind, there is no long-term financial incentive for us to immediately increase system resources when the natural course is that numbers will go down on their own. This being the case, we have made the decision to not scale up our game's underlying infrastructure in response to the recent surge in players."

Thus, the only option on the table is to play the DDoS card. With nobody being in a position to state whether this is 100% the case or not, as GGG do not need to publicly disclose evidence of this. They are not obligated to do so.
I mean, technically speaking, they're not wrong. Essentially, what is being experienced could be classed as a DDoS, just not an attack. It's a DDoS in concept only, where there is a sudden massive and sustained spike in system resource utilisation. The so-called "Distributed Denial of Service" is being caused by their players, their customers. It is entirely unintentional, but simply the nature of the beast.
They release a new expansion, a new challenge league, people are fed up with PoE2 EA, fed up with Diablo and other competitors in the genre, so they flock to PoE1.

Sure, I'm backseat-engineering here, but there's just no universe that exists in which there is a malicious DDoS taking place. At least not one of a scale that causes the consistent player disruption that various regions are experiencing at various different times (most notably during those regions peak player hours).

Some honesty would be nice, that's simply all there is to it. I'd continue playing if they'd just be more transparent about this situation. However, coming clean on this requires facing a PR nightmare, so that isn't likely going to happen.

I'll keep an eye on Steam charts and wait until it returns to the 10-20k concurrent players mark, and continue playing then.