Players in South Korea, both professional and streamers, have been reporting on consistent issues due to DDoS attacks and while the problem seemed to be fixed, it's only gotten worse.
Throughout the LCK 2024 Spring Split, teams reported issues due to targeted DDoS attacks which resulted in worse practice and even affected the LCK's schedule, with some games having to be moved due to the attacks. It also led to the games being played in front of an empty stadium to try and stop the influx of problems.
Not only LCK teams, but also well-known streamers and content creators in South Korea have been affected by these DDoS attacks and spoken out about them. Now, Riot has also made another statement, since the issue seems to be continuing into the Summer Split.
League of Legends: Riot Speaks Out Against DDoS Attacks
Head of League Studio, Andrei "RiotMeddler" van Roon went to Twitter to give some insight into what Riot have been doing to help teams and players that have been affected by the DDoS attacks. He explained where Riot stands and what is planned for future improvements.
| What are DDoS Attacks? A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack floods a targeted server, service, or network with overwhelming internet traffic from multiple sources, causing it to slow down or crash. This prevents legitimate users from accessing the service, disrupting operations and potentially leading to significant downtime and security vulnerabilities. |
In his post on Twitter/X, Riot Meddler revealed that Riot has been working with teams like T1 to figure out ways to help them practice and stream. T1 have been one of the most vocal teams and also the one the most affected by these attacks, with their HQ also having to shut down at times because of these attacks.
We’ve been working with T1 for months now and we’ve addressed a number of issues that had resulted in prior attacks on their HQ. These recent incidents however are different from those earlier attacks, and as a result are not addressed by the fixes we put in place.
The T1 players haven't been able to stream throughout the Spring Split, with most of their games getting interrupted because of these issues. With T1 believing that the problems were solved, the team members got to stream once more, only for it to be canceled once more because of new DDoS attacks.
Hey folks,I wanted to give an update on recent attacks on players' streams in Korea. These are really frustrating for everyone and we completely understand why T1 has shut down streams for now. We're working closely with them to create a safe playing and streaming environment....
— Andrei van Roon (@RiotMeddler) June 10, 2024
Riot Meddler explained that these latest attacks are different from previous ones, which is why Riot and T1 were not prepared for them. Both the teams and Riot are investigating the root cause and ways to mitigate these attacks.
Fans are demanding Riot find a way to fix the issue on a global level and not just a local one, since now it seems like whenever T1 players play, their accounts and connection might be safe, but then they'll have teammates disconnect due to targeted attacks instead, ruining their games.
It'll be interesting to see whether Riot is going to be able to fix these problems, not just for T1, but also all other players suffering from these DDoS attacks.