Blizzard was hit with a DDoS attack that made its servers inaccessible, disrupting gameplay for Battle.net users on Aug. 2.
Someone from Blizzard's customer support team posted on the Battle.net forums to acknowledge the attack, saying network engineers are on the case, working to address the issue. The problem has since been resolved, but according to a tweet from Blizzard's North American customer support team, reports of World Server Down in World of Warcraft are being investigated.
In a tweet, hacker group PoodleCorp claimed responsibility for the DDoS attack.
(EU & US) Blizzard #Offline #PoodleCorp @BlizzardCS @PoodlesInBlack @Gh0stPoodle
— PoodleCorp (@PoodleCorp) August 3, 2016
It's not clear who is PoodleCorp exactly, but some Battle.net users have surmised that some of the hacking group's members could be players who were recently banned from Overwatch, and thus now out for revenge.
Whoever they are, PoodleCorp appears to be a busy group. A day before the DDoS attack on Blizzard, the hackers apparently took on Pokémon GO, marking their second takedown of the mobile game after first attacking it on July 16.
Pokémon GO servers were also down for several hours on July 17, but OurMine, another hacking group, took the credit for that attack.
In an interview via Twitter DM, PoodleCorp's leader, @xotehpoodle, told Mic that they targeted Pokémon GO because it's popular right now. Also, they're doing what they're doing because nobody can stop them.
"We do it because we can, nobody can stop us and we just like to cause chaos," said the hacking group's head, who added that their botnet is worth more than Niantic.
Over the summer, PoodleCorp also claimed responsibility for hacking League of Legends and popular YouTubers.
Earlier in June, Blizzard also experienced a major outage as another DDoS attack took out its servers. Twitter user AppleJ4ck, said to be tied to hacking group Lizard Squad, claimed responsibility for the attack and mocked Blizzard, saying the attack was part of some "preparations."
As PoodleCorp has claimed responsibility for the most recent outage, does that mean that there's more to come given what AppleJ4ck's been preparing for has not come to fruition?
In the past, Lizard Squad had been connected to disruptions on Microsoft's Xbox Live and Sony's PlayStation Network.
When angry gamers swarmed the hackers' Twitter accounts, PoodleCorp and AppleJ4ck replied with similar messages, saying anyone who gets upset over a game should get a life and that they're doing everyone a favor by knocking them offline.
