Online gaming is competitive, fast-paced and is a rapidly expanding sector, worth billions of dollars globally. It’s also frequently targeted by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. These cyberattacks are designed to knock individual players offline and create delays in communication over the network. As well as ruining the gaming experience, the financial implications can be massive.
With eGgaming and eSports, the stakes are high, with billions of players participating simultaneously across the globe. Some DDoS threat actors seek to create unfair advantages by knocking their competitors offline; some seek attention by disrupting a game, and others aim to harm the reputation of the host gaming company itself.
Lost revenue, lost customers, increased costs
Nothing ruins an online gaming experience more than lag time or downtime. Player churn is a common problem in the competitive e-sports industry because if DDoS attacks impact a game, players are likely to switch gaming platforms. Losing players means losing revenue. On top of that, the attacks cost IT staff time and cause more customer support calls, both of which cut into a company’s bottom line.
DDoS Attack Prevention – What doesn’t work
In light of the increasing frequency and sophistication of today’s DDoS attacks and the ease with which they can be launched, gaming companies are recognizing the need to include DDoS mitigation in their cybersecurity defenses. However, simply relying on a firewall, with its static rules to block potentially bad traffic, is insufficient. Out-moded solutions that rely heavily on basic traffic thresholds, all too frequently create false positives, thus blocking legitimate incoming packets as well as the DDoS traffic. More sophisticated DDoS mitigation systems avoid this by automatically inspecting every inbound packet’s header and its payload data, enabling them to surgically remove the DDoS packets without disrupting the delivery of legitimate network traffic. It is crucial to have granular visibility into the attacks, before, during and after, so analysts are equipped to follow the best mitigation process.
Legacy DDoS solutions, which typically rely on out of band scrubbing, are also insufficient because by the time the bad traffic is identified and sent to a scrubbing service, crucial minutes – or tens of minutes, have passed, and the damage has already been done.
What works well
DDoS attackers typically change the attack techniques in the midst of an attack, using automation and multi-vectors, so gaming organizations need a real-time, automated DDoS mitigation solution that automatically detects the attacks and mitigates them in real-time, immediately eliminating the threat.
Case studies in successful DDoS mitigation for the eGaming
OneQode is one Corero customer that has solved the DDoS crisis. OneQode works primarily with game industry customers, helping them to deliver high-fidelity, low-latency multiplayer experiences and provide a level playing field for 1.45 billion gamers across 3 continents in the Asia Pacific region, which has the world’s largest number of gamers. Corero keeps OneQode’s network clear of bad traffic, and the Corero dashboard provides real-time, single-pane visibility of attacks. For details, read the OneQode case study.
Jagex, the largest independent games company in Europe, uses Corero to mitigate the demanding volumes and frequency of attack traffic, and receive DDoS incident intelligence that keeps the company on top of the constantly emerging new threat vectors. Read our Jagex case study.