The biggest esports tournament in history may feature a record $18 million prize pool, but it’s also made it a bigger target. The International suffered through extensive delays due to DDoS attacks today.
The second day of the massive Dota 2 championship—whose prize pool that will make its winners instant millionaires—was supposed to begin with a big rivalry match between two of America’s most storied esports franchises, Evil Geniuses and Complexity.
The winner of the best-of-three series will guarantee themselves $1 million more of the hefty prize pool, but so far it seems like no one will actually be able to win thanks to ongoing delays caused in part by the malicious DDoS attacks.
Complexity jumped out to a lead in the opening game, slogging through a few lengthy pauses, but Evil Geniuses stormed back after an inspired defense to take a lead.
Then Evil Geniuses captain Peter “ppd” Dager called for a pause, leading to the analyst desk scurrying to fill more dead air on a broadcast with over 300,000 viewers.
Yesterday the tournament suffered delays due to a Comcast outage in the region. But analyst desk host Paul “ReDeYe” Chaloner, who put on a herculean effort to keep the show rolling, revealed that today the event was experiencing a DDoS attack.
Over two hours after the match began, the players returned to the booths to continue the first game of a best-of-three series.
It’s unclear who is perpetrating the attacks or why they’re attacking one of the biggest esports events ever. And The International isn’t the only event under attack—the Challenger Series playoffs in League of Legends was hit, but on a lesser scale.
But maybe there’s at least a tiny silver lining to the affair.
eSports has come a long way … back in my day, tournaments weren’t important enough to DDOS. Ah, the sweet smell of progress #TI5
— Michael Luxion (@LANDodger) August 4, 2015
Of course, fans would rather just watch the damn games.
