Steam, Origin and Battle.net hit by DDoS attacks

Various large-scale game platforms were hit by distributed denial-of-service attacks last night, including Valve's Steam platform, with the affects still ongoing this morning. DDoS attacks usually see services and networks taken down or slowed to a crawl by an overload from an outside source, meaning that users are unable to utilize these services fully while the overload is ongoing. Electronic Arts' Origin platform first became unstable last night, with users unable to log into the EA servers. A group called "DERP" claimed responsibility on Twitter. This same group were also allegedly behind DDoS attacks on EA.com earlier this week, as well as attacks on Blizzard's Battle.net. Later still, both the Steam platform and Blizzard's Battle.net were taken offline, with users receiving error messages when they tried to access either website. A different pair of Twitter users claimed responsibility this time around. The affects of the Steam downtime in particular appear to have had adverse affects for developers, who apparently were unable to access the forums or upload new game builds. Although neither Valve nor Blizzard have acknowledged the downtime as-of-yet, EA said that it is "working to resolve connectivity/login issues affecting various platforms/games." DDoS attacks on game servers and platforms are becoming increasingly problematic in recent years. CCP suffered large-scale attacks on EVE Online and Dust 514 earlier this year.