Gears of War: E-Day Developer Confirms DDoS Attack

The developer of The Coalition said Gears of War: E-Day was hit by a DDoS attack over the weekend.

Gears of War: E-Day was hit by a DDoS attack over the weekend, developer The Coalition has said.

Players experienced intermittent disconnections and login issues when trying to play the Xbox Series X and S and the action game on PC, with The Coalition finally coming out on top. It has now confirmed that the problems are the result of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack targeting online services.

"Our teams will continue to monitor and mitigate this activity. We will provide updates if there are significant changes," the coalition said. "Thank you for your patience and understanding."

There has been a lot of speculation online about the motivation behind Gears being hit with a DDoS attack, with some pointing to continued online vendettas against the game for allegedly being "woke". E-Day has an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating on Steam. Whatever the reason (there may be no real reason behind the DDoS attack at all), E-Day is now launched.

Last week, Reese Elliott, head of marketing analytics at Alinea Analytics, reported that E-Day sold about 230,000 copies in its first week, which it described as a soft start. These unofficial figures, not supported by data provided by Microsoft, point to the Xbox Game Pass subscription service cannibalizing sales.

Earlier this month, the head of The Coalition responded to reports that studio staff were worried they could lose their jobs amid ongoing cuts at Xbox, promising the next Gears game wouldn't take that long to make.

Eurogamer had reported on internal concerns about the layoffs of The Coalition following the release of E-Day. "The mood is definitely 'let's not celebrate the game until three months after launch, just in case,'" one source told the site, which is highly unusual. "We're just waiting for the next wave [of layoffs] or a reorganization under Activision or something later this year," another claimed.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's "reset" of Microsoft's games business has seen nearly 2,000 people cut this fiscal year, with more to come. A number of studios have gone out of business or are closing down. Microsoft has also reorganized its studios, bringing Halo and Sea of Thieves Rare developer Activision under Call of Duty developer Activision and Grounded Obsidian developer Fallout developer Bethesda.

Of course, Gears of War: E-Day was chosen as an Xbox Series X and S and PC game, ditching any version for a sales-boosting PS5 version. Coalition studio head Mike Crump recently told the BBC that success for E-Day is behind sales, saying: "We're measuring things like, are we showcasing the platform? Are we pushing the hardware to its limits? Are we showcasing what Xbox is capable of? ... Our goal is basically to be the best possible game on Xbox and really show the industry with our hardware."

Wesley is the managing editor of IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at @wesley_yinpoole or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.