Gears of War: E-Day players spent the weekend fighting login queues instead of Locust. Developer The Coalition has confirmed the game's online services were targeted by DDoS attacks.
What happened
On Sunday, players started experiencing intermittent disconnects, login issues, and extended queue times. The Coalition's support team acknowledged the problems quickly, then confirmed the cause via the Gears Community account:
“Earlier today, some players experienced intermittent disconnects, login issues, or other service disruptions in Gears of War: E-Day. These issues were due to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks targeting our online services. Our teams are continuing to monitor and mitigate this activity.”
Current status
Xbox Support has confirmed services are back to normal. The Coalition says it'll keep monitoring and will post updates if anything changes. The motive behind the attack remains unknown.
The context
The attack landed five days after E-Day's October 6 launch, which pushed the series back into the mainstream with a 31,517-player Steam peak and a strong Game Pass opening. Unofficial estimates put first-week sales around 230,000 copies — a soft start attributed to Game Pass cannibalizing sales. The game holds a “mostly positive” Steam rating.
KongMNG's take
DDoS-ing a game five days after launch doesn't prove anything except that someone has too much free time. Servers are back up — see you in Horde.