Gaming behemoth Blizzard suffered an outage that knocked gamers offline, unable to access games and login on Battle.net, and the hacker who claimed responsibility is mocking everyone.
On Monday, gamers were unable to access Blizzard games including the widely popular Overwatch, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, Diablo and other games.
Gamers flocked to various forums, social media and other online venues to inquire or complain about the outage, only to find out it was intentional and quite widespread.
The downtime seems to be stemming from a DDoS attack and the hacker who claimed responsibility for it is taunting both Blizzard and disgruntled gamers complaining about the outage.
Twitter user AppleJ4ck, who claims to be responsible for the disruption, mockingly tells Blizzard the outage is part of some "preparations."
Hai there @BlizzardCS
Don't mind me, just doing some preparations.
Take care of my packets, Thanks— AppleJ4ck (@AppleJ4ckxoxo) June 20, 2016
Unsurprisingly, gamers who were knocked offline or were unable to access Blizzard's gaming platform altogether did not react too well to the hacker's post, leaving one angry comment after another - to no avail.
The hacker was unfazed, further mocking gamers.
"The fact that you let a couple of pixels affect your entire day is just sad, in a way, I'm doing y'all a favor," said AppleJ4ck.
Blizzard, for its part, did not confirm the hack or whether AppleJ4ack is indeed responsible for it. The company simply said it is investigating an issue that affected its authentication servers, "which may result in failed or slow login attempts." Luckily, the "technical issues" did not take long to resolve, as Blizzard soon announced it all returned to normal.
This may be just the beginning of a storm, however, as more disruptions could soon affect Blizzard's services. AppleJ4ack said the attack was just a test "before the main event," which means they have bigger plans for Battle.net in the near future.
Blizzard has yet to confirm if the disruption was indeed caused by the hacker and, if so, whether it's taking adequate precautions to prevent more attacks.
As for the hacker, AppleJ4ck has been tied to Lizard Squad, the hacking collective that successfully unleashed several DDoS attacks in the past. Lizard Squad was behind the disruptions that affected Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live, among others.
For now, Blizzard has resolved the issues and everything should be back to normal, though a few gamers outside of the United States may still experience some difficulties.
Were you affected by the Battle.net disruption as well? Drop by our comment section below and share your thoughts on the matter.
