While a Minecraft tournament is taking place right now, the entire Principality of Andorra has been deprived of the Internet. The report ? Several participants are from the small country, and suspicion falls on pirates who wanted to eject them from the game. The problem has since been resolved, but the Andorran players have been eliminated.
Since Wednesday, January 19, Twitch has hosted a Minecraft tournament called SquidCraft. As its name suggests, it’s about taking over the now famous Squid Game playoffs within the sandbox game. The event is one of the most popular on the platform attracting more than a million spectators, benefiting as much from the immense success of the series as from the game itself. However, the latter was disrupted from the second day of broadcast.
Indeed, at least eight players were disqualified due to server disconnection. Already very suspicious, the phenomenon is all the more so when we notice that these participants all live in Andorra. On January 21, Andorra Telecom, the only ISP in the country, announced on Twitter that it had been the victim of multiple DDoS attacks. The entire principality was without internet for several hours.
Minecraft Tournament Causes Internet Shutdown Across Andorra
Naturally, the rumors in the hallway began to point to the coincidence, which is surely not one. Indeed, the winner of the tournament will win a prize of $100,000 (88,000 euros). However, of the 150 participants, a significant number live in Andorra. It is therefore quite plausible that the attack suffered by Andorra Telecom was intended to exclude them, thus increasing the chances of winning the sum.
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If the ISP managed to quickly restore the country’s connection, the players were definitely eliminated of the tournament. For the time being, nothing says that they will obtain compensation, or that the origin of the attack will be traced. In any case, this is not the first time that Minecraft has been used by hackers. Last year, the game was used as a platform to mass distribute malware to Android smartphones.
