The game is literally unplayable.
Rocket League pros are taking to social media in frustration with widespread DDoS attacks during ranked play. The issue is causing many of them to stop making content or lose interest in the game altogether.
While the community has been complaining about this issue for a while, frustration seems to be peaking with more and more pros impacted by this issue.
How do DDoS attacks affect Rocket League players?
First, it's important to know what this form of cheating looks like. As defined by Cloudflare, a "denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service, or network." It accomplishes this by "overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic."
In Rocket League, DDoS attacks appear as sudden drastic spikes in the network latency, AKA ping, of the affected players. This makes it nearly impossible to hit the ball, collect boost, or sometimes even move your car at all. It can be difficult to differentiate from simple lag, but there are a few telltale signs you can use to identify them.
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Signs of a DDoS attack in Rocket League
- Only one team is lagging. If both sides are lagging, the server may simply be experiencing some issues.
- You aren't experiencing internet issues. If your connection doesn't have any problems before or after the latency spikes against a particular opponent in Rocket League, it is a sign they may be causing the DDoS attack.
- Opponents with suspicious names and low hours. Oftentimes, wrongdoers will not blatantly violate rules on their main game accounts. If your opponent is using an account with a low amount of in-game hours, or a suspicious or randomly-generated username, there's a good chance it's not their main account. This is especially true in higher ranks, where players typically take much more hours to achieve that level.
Sometimes, you won't even have to try to spot these underhanded methods, the perpetrator will tell you. Since many of them aren't using their main accounts, perpetrators of Rocket League DDoS attacks can be quite shameless.
In this video by Gen.G's ApparentlyJack, his opponent directly asks if he'd like to simply give up and gift them the win before they do anything. Since DDoS attackers largely use this method of cheating to rapidly climb the ranked ladder, pros and other high-ranked players are disproportionately affected by the issue.
How can we fix the problem?
Unfortunately, we can't. Not directly, anyway. The only people with the power to implement a proper solution to these DDoS attacks are the developers of Rocket League themselves at Psyonix. However, they have yet to take any action despite complaints by pro players, content creators, and community members alike. For the time being, all the player base can do is continue to report every instance of DDoSing they see and let their voices be heard on social media.
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