War Thunder is latest game to suffer a cyberattack

Another game is weathering a digital attack that’s caused issues for players.

Developer Gaijin Entertainment revealed that cyberattackers hit its online multiplayer plane-and-tank combat game War Thunder with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assault this morning. This prevented many players from logging into the free-to-play game, and it caused others to have problems joining ongoing sessions. Gaijin says it has now dealt with the attack and most people should not even notice any difference in their experience. Attacks like this one are a growing problem for games and gaming networks that rely on the Internet, and War Thunder is just the latest victim.

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We’ve asked Gaijin Entertainment if it has a source of the attack, and we’ll update this post with any new information.

“We managed to reduce the overall effect of this [attack] quite satisfactorily, to the effect that much of the playerbase would not even have noticed it was happening,” reads an update on the War Thunder forums. “We take our security very seriously and, in this case, take great satisfaction in the outcome on this particular occasion. Many thanks for your continued support and rest assured that we will continue to improve the reaction to any anticipated future attacks.”

Cyberattacks are a growing concern in the gaming market. Most notably, a massive DDoS strike caused Microsoft’s Xbox Live and Sony’s PlayStation Network to both go down on Christmas day. PSN was hit so hard that it stayed down for almost five days. This prevented players from getting online to play multiplayer games, but it also caused issues for many trying to connect to third-party servers for primarily single-player campaigns in releases like Far Cry 4.

These attacks, while frustrating for players, are also expensive for the operators. Developers have to put in extra work to fix affected servers, but the downtime prevents players from making in-game purchases. If the end result is more than $5,000 in damages, the attack turns qualifies as a felony.

War Thunder is available on PC and PlayStation 4. It has slowly built up a dedicated fan base that appreciate its variety of gameplay and vehicles. It offers air and tank combat.