One of the most accessible esports going, Hearthstone also proved itself one of the most open to denial of service attacks over the weekend, as three online tournaments were interrupted by attacks in two days.
The Daily Dot not only reported on the attacks that caused problems with Hearthstats Challenger League, Kinguin Winter and ESL events Friday and Saturday, writer Callum Leslie got to experience them first hand. The DDOS assaults targeted players, broadcasters and tournament organizers alike. Leslie — a volunteer caster for Hearthstats — experienced connection problems with his broadcast as attackers focused on ruining the third and fourth matches of the final day of the challenger league tournament. Eventually the Hearthstats organizers ended the stream, completing the competitive matches offline.
That was Friday. On Saturday the second Kinguin for Charity event was interrupted and finally postponed until next week, after two players were forced to abandon their games. The charity tournament has been rescheduled for next weekend in order to give players time to gird themselves from attacks.
Later in the day, the ESL's King of the Hill event was similarly attacked, proving that not even experienced esports organizations are safe from attacks.
Long story short, it was not a good weekend for the competitive Hearthstone scene.
It's a serious issue ongoing issue for competitive games requiring an online connection between two or more parties (as opposed to games that can be run over a local network, old-school style) that's been punctuated by the weekend attacks.
As The Daily Dot's Callum Leslie concludes, we could be in for a rough year for online esports tournaments.