Massive DDoS Attack Knocks Out Steam, Riot, and Other Services

A major DDoS attack disrupted several major gaming platforms, including Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, Riot Games, and Epic Games, causing widespread outages and connection issues across multiple services.

Massive DDoS Attack on Steam, Riot Games and others

What Happened

The coordinated attack occurred shortly before 11 PM ET in early October. Reports first surfaced from Riot Games, which confirmed problems affecting League of Legends and Valorant players. Within minutes, other major services began experiencing similar disruptions.

All evidence suggests that the outage stemmed from a massive DDoS campaign allegedly launched using the Airsuru botnet, one of the most powerful networks ever recorded.

You can also read about recent industry discussions, such as the Microsoft buying Steam rumor which stirred debate just days before this incident.

Riot Games Confirms the Disruption

A spokesperson from Riot Games acknowledged the issue, stating:

“We can confirm that our teams have been working to resolve intermittent network issues affecting our games over the past ~36 hours. Like many companies over the last day or two, we’ve faced challenges to network stability and taken proactive steps to protect the player experience.”

The statement confirms that Riot’s internal systems were not directly breached but that the network itself was overwhelmed by traffic.

Record-Breaking Bandwidth

According to early reports, the Airsuru botnet generated a staggering 29.69 Tbps of malicious traffic breaking the previous global DDoS record of 22.2 Tbps. The attack primarily targeted TCP protocols, flooding servers with excessive requests and temporarily knocking them offline.

A similar level of disruption has been speculated in other areas of gaming, though Microsoft has firmly denied rumors of canceling its next-gen Xbox plans.

Services Back Online

As of now, all affected platforms have restored connectivity, and users can log back into their accounts. However, cybersecurity experts warn that the scale of this attack highlights new vulnerabilities in global gaming infrastructure.

While rare, simultaneous multi-company DDoS attacks could signal a shift in tactics among large-scale botnets, especially those capable of leveraging global network weaknesses.

Outlook

The companies have yet to release a full postmortem on the event, but security teams across the industry are expected to strengthen their network defenses to prevent similar large-scale incidents in the future.