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Blizzard's Battle.net servers have been taken down in a major DDoS attack allegedly launched by hacking collective Poodlecorp. Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard's Battle.net servers were hit by a massive DDoS attack on Wednesday (3 August) causing latency, connection and login issues across popular games such as Overwatch, World of Warcraft and Hearthstone. Hacker group PoodleCorp has claimed responsibility for the latest attack on the developer's servers.

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"We are aware of a DDoS attack that is currently affecting stability across all games," a Blizzard representative wrote in the company's forums. "Our network engineers are working on addressing the issue and resolving the attack as quickly as possible."

PoodleCorp, the same hacker group that claimed to have launched a DDoS attack to cripple Pokémon Go's servers last week, claimed responsibility for the attack on Blizzard on Twitter. Their claim, however, has not been confirmed by the company yet. The group also warned that they are looking to target another gaming network "soon".

Blizzard's official Customer Support Twitter account later confirmed that the DDoS attack has ended and players can once again log into their BattleNet accounts. They added they are still "currently investigating reports of World Server Down in WoW".

However, the company noted in a separate tweet that they are investigating the issue that disconnected Overwatch players, claiming that it was "not a DDoS event" and was working on a fix for the issue.

In June, Blizzard's servers suffered multiple outages due to alleged DDoS attacks by hacker group Lizard Squad that prevented players from logging into the company's games.

The outage occurred on the same day Blizzard launched its first seasonal event, in celebration of the upcoming Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Between 2 August and 22 August, players can purchase special loot boxes that include new Olympic-themed cosmetic items including sprays, skins, emotes, icons and victory poses, and participate in a new limited-time game mode, Lucioball.

The DDoS attack also comes on the heels of Blizzard's latest crackdown on Overwatch cheaters with another widespread ban wave, removing players who used "triggerbots" to boost play. Although the developer has made its firm, zero-tolerance policy on cheating, hacking and use of any form of unfair advantage in its recently released FPS eminently clear, many affected users did not take the ban well, calling it "unacceptable".

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