PS4, PS3, and PS Vita systems had been impacted yesterday due to the PlayStation Network being down. The service, in addition to numerous PC multiplayer games, where taken down by hackers.
Sony acknowledged the PSN problem via a tweet.
Network update: our engineers are aware of the issues and are working to resolve them. We'll keep you posted – sorry for the inconvenience
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) August 24, 2014
A group identified as Lizard Squad is declaring accountability for the attack on Sony’s servers. They took to Twitter to taunt Sony.
https://twitter.com/LizardSquad/statuses/503488179651878912
PlayStation owners aren’t strangers to server outages. Three years back, hackers took down PSN for a whole month. The long outage led Sony to apologize at E3 months later and give out free games to everyone impacted.
Lizard Squad then chose to call in a bomb threat for Smedley’s flight home:
https://twitter.com/LizardSquad/statuses/503595025301635073
Lizard Squad took down servers for several other PC games. For instance, they targeted Blizzard’s Battle.net earlier this weekend. This stopped many from playing Hearthstone, Diablo 3, and World of Warcraft. The final update from Blizzard’s customer support states that they have the server issues in check, though:
We are gradually bringing everyone back online again. Thank you all once again for your patience and for following our twitter feed. :D
— Blizzard CS – The Americas (@BlizzardCS) August 24, 2014
League of Legends was brought down by Lizard Squad as well. Developer Riot Games admitted in a forum post that DDOS problems have been happening for several weeks, though. They seem resigned to the fact that this is a regular hazard for any multiplayer game.