‘Escape From Tarkov’ suffers sustained server issues in possible DDoS attacks

Alternatively, it might be down to Twitch drops

Battlestate Games’ multiplayer online shooter Escape From Tarkov has seen its servers struggle under what may be targeted attacks.

The issues began on December 28 (per dedicated site Tarkov News) and have been ongoing through to today (January 3). Players have experienced difficulty logging in or launching matches, not earning loot from in-game victories, and other problems.

The problems have largely coincided with a series of Twitch drops the developer has been orchestrating with a number of streamers, making for some confusion over whether the issues were down to overloaded servers struggling to cope with increased demand, or more malicious attacks.

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However, in a tweet issued at 11 PM GMT on January 2, Battlestate Games said the server issues were “not related” to the promotional event. Later in the same thread, the developer pre-empted calls to upgrade its capacity by adding, “Some issues show themselves only under heavy load (like the one we’re currently experiencing) and ‘buying more servers’ won’t fix these issues.”

Escape From Tarkov lead designer Nikita Buyanov later said on Twitch that “these kind of people or organisation are trying to make things worse by attacking our servers at the same time, and I wish them only the worst”, implying that the issues were caused by a deliberate attack.

Buyanov added that Battlestate is “do[ing] everything we can, we’re sorry for all the queues and stuff”, and that the team is “working on resolving this issue, because literally this is the one and only priority for us right now”.

Escape From Tarkov players aren’t entirely convinced the problems the game is currently facing are indeed down to attacks though. In a thread on the game’s subreddit, many are speculating that the increased attention the game is getting from the Twitch drops – which typically offer in-game items to players – has caught Battlestate unprepared.

One poster asks “wouldn’t increased exposure drive sales thus increasing load and contributing to the problem?”, while another adds “Is this due to increased player count? If so, is there any information on how many concurrent players are live? It would be a ‘good problem’ to have if Tarkov is being overloaded by significant playerbase growth. We’d all love to know.”

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At the time of writing, the most recent update from the developer is that a new technical client update has been installed, asking players to update through the Escape From Tarkov launcher.

There are no more specific details on what the patch does or implements, but the mention of players being logged out automatically after 30 minutes of inactivity implies idling may have been contributing to server issues. Whatever the truth of the cause of the problems, the game’s status page currently still indicates “partial problems with the services”.

Elsewhere, Samsung has announced that its 2022 range of Smart TVs will feature integrated cloud gaming services, including Google Stadia and GeForce Now.

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