Final Fantasy XIV’s seemingly unstoppable DDoS attack is the new norm

Cyberattackers are assaulting the servers for Square Enix’s popular Final Fantasy XIV online role-playing game, and the publisher is struggling to deal with the problem.

Square Enix confirmed on Final Fantasy XIV’s official website today that someone (or a group of people) has barraged its servers with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack since June 16. In a DDoS, a network of devices overwhelm a server with junk data, which causes performance problems for standard packet transfers. The publisher says the source of the DDoS is anonymous, so no one has given the company a reason why this is happening (like demanding that Square Enix add bunny girls to its MMORPG). This is primarily affecting the North American data center for the game. The publisher says it has a team working to address the problem, but that may not help.