What’s the common point between Andorra, Twitch and Minecraft ?
At first glance it might sound like the beginning of a joke but for Andorra’s inhabitants it wasn’t on this January 22nd.
To those who were sleeping in Geography’s classes, Andorra is a small enclaved principality located on the French/Spanish border in Europe. Concerning Minecraft and Twitch, the first one is an open world sandbox adventure game and the latter is an interactive live streaming service. If you never heard about them, well it might be time to get out of your cavern.
Between January 19-24, 150 streamers clashed on “Twitch Rivals Squidcraft Games”, a Minecraft tournament in a custom mode inspired by the popular TV series “The Squid Game” and followed by over 2 millions viewers.
During the 6-days tournament, players had to play mini-games, elimination were definitive and the winner will get a prize, here $100.000 . And apparently, like the TV show, all shots were allowed to be the one winning this game. And unfortunately, Andorra paid the cost.
For a few hours, the Internet wasn’t available in the whole country. This due to a massive DDoS attack targeting the main and only internet provider, Andorra Telecom.
This DDos was performed using over 3 millions machines dispatched in 50 countries which send an average of 10 Gigabits/sec of data to overload the system.
Players in this area were automatically disconnected and then eliminated from the game.
Seems there are no limits, no mercy in the e-sport world.