The 'Dota 2' Championships Was Temporarily Taken Down by a Cyberattack

We're in the midst of the 2015 International Dota 2 Championships, one of the biggest eSports events in the world, where the top 16 teams are competing for a total prize pool of $18 million. However, the event was put on hold for almost an hour because of a denial of service (DDoS) attack.

According to several people attending the live event at the Key Arena in Seattle, the on-stage commentators at the event confirmed that they had to pause the game because of a DDoS attack. All the teams and players who are participating in The International are on site, and could conceivably play via LAN (a direct connection that's not vulnerable to an attack), but matches are still played online to track player stats and spectating purposes for the viewers at home.

A DDoS attack brings the biggest competitive gaming/esports event of all time to a halt. Valve and millions of dollars are not immune. #TI5
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) August 4, 2015

If you tuned into the livestream of the event on Twitch, you'd see the commentators, analysts, and other hosts killing time (like real pros, I might add) while developer Valve regrouped.

Luckily for Valve, it was able to restart the event after almost an hour. Lizard Squad's DDoS attack on Microsoft's online services might have delayed Christmas morning for a few days, but there are literally millions of dollars on the line here, not counting the record-breaking prize pool. Valve sold out all 10,000 tickets of Key Arena for the event, not to mention the many hotel rooms in the area for teams and fans who flew in from all over the world.

analyst desk just claimed the @Dota2 network is being DDOS'ed, halting #TI5
— Arthur -Boop- Gies (@aegies) August 4, 2015

TI5 outage is result of a DDoS which isn't surprising but is still totally terrible.
— Mitch Dyer (@MitchyD) August 4, 2015

I can't imagine everyone would have been able to hang out for a couple of days if the DDoS attack delays the competition by that much time.

Twitter's also blowing up with people saying that the DDoS attack is also affecting other eSports events, including the qualifying matched for the European League of Legends Champion Series, but developer Riot has yet to confirm.

We're back! EG vs. compLexity #TI5
— DOTA 2 (@DOTA2) August 4, 2015