Blizzard and Overwatch 2 struck by third DDoS attack in a week

A DDoS attack on Blizzard caused issues for Overwatch 2 players earlier today, following on from similar attacks on the company during the free to play shooter’s launch last week. The latest attack came just after Overwatch 2 had finished a period of emergency maintenance. Although Blizzard have confirmed the DDoS attack has now ended, the recurring attacks aren’t exactly a good sign for a game already beset by technical issues.

Some Battle.net players may have experienced “high latency and disconnections” during the attack, Blizzard Support tweeted. The attack began shortly after a period of emergency maintenance left Overwatch 2 offline for an hour. Blizzard acknowledged through their forum that they were prioritising work to fix an issue that prevents players from accessing all their owned heroes, which they put down to a server error when tracking player progression.

Along with the most recent DDoS attack, Overwatch 2 also saw two of its heroes temporarily withdrawn from play for bug fixes to their ability kits. Transforming robot who’s not a Transformer Bastion was withdrawn from all play modes. Techie ZZ Top impersonator Torbjörn was booted from competitive, but stayed playable in Quick Play. Both of these heroes had bugs that “heavily impacted gameplay”, Blizzard said.

Bastion’s problem was a glitch with the character’s artillery ultimate, as noted on Reddit. The ability was added for Bastion’s Overwatch 2 rework, but there was an issue with the timer if PC players pressed Q and the left mouse button at the same time as Bastion’s last shell fired. This extended the timer, letting Bastion fire as many shells as possible in that time. Torbjörn’s issue was reported anecdotally on the Competitive Overwatch subreddit as a doubling of his overload ability. This would only work once, but extended the time the ability was active for and stacked the character’s armour.

Ollie felt the game was fun but overshadowed by expectations of a true sequel in his Overwatch 2 review-in-progress. “For a content update, Overwatch 2 does an absolutely phenomenal job,” he said. “For a sequel, it feels pretty underwhelming. I wonder, would it have been better to use chapters like Fortnite did? Something between a content update and a sequel?”

Activision Blizzard are still contending with legal issues and reports alleging workplace discrimination, harassment and poor working conditions. The company’s also in the process of being acquired by Microsoft for $68.7 billion (£60.8 billion), a surprise deal announced back in January. That month, Blizzard Entertainment head Mike Ybarra said he was committed to fostering change within the company.

Overwatch 2 is a free to play download from Battle.net. If you’re stuck in a queue then why not check out Ollie’s how to unlock every hero in Overwatch 2 guide?