EA's online servers brought down following DDoS attack claimed by hacker group PoodleCorp

Shortly after the open beta for upcoming World War 1 shooter Battlefield 1 went live, EA's servers were hit with a DDoS attack causing widespread connectivity issues, not only for the beta but across multiple EA games as well. Hacking collective PoodleCorp claimed responsibility for the attack on the publisher's servers on Twitter.

Battlefield's and EA's official customer support Twitter accounts acknowledged the server issues saying:"EA is currently experiencing an outage. EA games, services and support may be impacted. We're working to resolve as fast as possible."

The tweets came hours after the beta went live and PoodleCorp declared the attack. The hacker group also claimed responsibility for the brief outage on EA's console servers the previous night, tweeting that "EA servers were toasted real good tonight."

Although the group has not specified a reason for the alleged assault, it does seem to coincide with the launch of Battlefield 1's highly anticipated open beta.

PoodleCorp is the same hacking group that claimed to have launched a DDoS attack to take down Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto Online servers and Blizzard's Battle.net servers in early August as well as Niantic's Pokémon Go servers back in July.

Their most recent claim has not been confirmed by EA yet. However, gamers immediately took to Twitter to voice their frustration and outrage over the alleged DDoS attack and subsequent server outage.

EA's interruption also came just hours after Blizzard Entertainment's servers were pounded by yet another widespread attack on its own networks causing high latency and disconnection in its games. The attacks began less than 24 hours after the Overwatch and World of Warcraft developer released its new World of Warcraft: Legion.

Blizzard's official Customer Support Twitter account later claimed that the login issues were resolved and apologised for the inconvenience. However, the company noted that it was currently monitoring another DDoS attack against network providers causing latency and connection issues across its games.

Blizzard's servers have been crippled by multiple outages over the past few months due to alleged DDoS attacks. In June, the company was hit by a massive DDoS attack claimed by hacker group Lizard Squad, preventing players from accessing its games.

Last week, Blizzard said it was hit with another DDoS attack that caused connection issues in some of its popular titles, including World of Warcraft, Overwatch and Hearthstone, as well as its sites and forums. That assault also coincided with the end of Overwatch's Summer Games Series that ran from 2 August to 22 August in celebration of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Battlefield 1 is slated for release on 21 October for PS4, Xbox One and PC. Weighing in at around 6.1 GB, the open beta is currently available to players across all platforms.