Sporadic attacks have been hitting servers worldwide since early May.
Final Fantasy 14 director and producer Naoki Yoshida has said the ongoing DDoS attacks on the MMO are the longest and "largest-scale" the game has seen in the last decade.
"With the DDoS attacks, I believe this is the largest-scale and length we've been seeing this sort of attack since the original Final Fantasy 14," Yoshida revealed during the latest Letter from the Producer livestream. "Of course, although it is the largest and longest period we've been receiving these attacks, we do have a very talented infrastructure team in Square Enix, and those who are specifically assigned to Final Fantasy 14 working very hard to protect us on a 24-hour basis; they swap teams on a rotation."
Yoshida continued to say that the team has been working both internally and externally to figure out how to squash the attacks, and is "trying to switch strategies as needed." The instances have been causing "somewhere upwards of 1000 to 2000 people" to be disconnected at any given time, but Yoshida added: "I am hopeful because we have not seen any sort of critical damage at this point, and so Square Enix will continue to work diligently to protect us from the DDoS attacks."
The DDoS problems started in early May with an eye-watering 25-hour long attack on servers across Europe, North America, Japan and Oceania. They've been occurring almost every single day since then, ranging anywhere from four hours all the way to 12-hour attacks. It's been a frustrating experience for many players—especially with the latest Moogle Treasure Trove event including Deep Dungeons, and disconnecting in one of those can cause you to lose a mighty chunk of progress.
It's also a worrying omen as we slowly approach Dawntrail's release on July 2 (or June 28 if you preorder for early access). Even without DDoS shenanigans, Endwalker's release in 2021 saw the game crumble under the weight of an inflated playerbase, causing hours-long login queues and the game being pulled from sale all together for six whole-ass weeks as servers struggled to stay afloat. It was a rough time, and the thought of a DDoS attack ripping people out of the game during Dawntrail when the servers may already be bursting at the seams is a terrifying thought.
It definitely seems to be something that Yoshida and the team want to have under control before we set sail for Turial, though. "It's quite difficult, the attacks themselves are quite simple because it's just basically computers that have been hacked throughout the world and these different packets come flying at our servers," he said. "But we are trying our best to apply the countermeasures needed and we are aware of the situation and are working hard to protect us against it."
Yoshida wrapped up the DDoS discussion by thanking players for their patience and encouragement throughout the problems, concluding that "our staff members are working hard and I do hope that they will continue to persevere."
Mercifully, looking at the Lodestone, the attacks do seem to be slowing down somewhat. The last DDoS-related update was on May 14, which gives us two days in the clear so far. Fingers crossed it stays that way—I've still got those Yokai FATEs to grind and dungeons to plunder before Danwtrail comes out.
