An online group or person going by the name DERP claims that it is currently attacking EA's login servers, taking Origin down and preventing players from accessing the digital distribution's services.

At the time of writing players can't log in to the service, play EA games on various platforms including PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox One or make purchases through the storefront. The outage affects numerous games including Star Wars: The Old Republic, Battlefield 4, FIFA 14, The Simpsons: Tapped Out and many more.

DERP claims on its twitter account that it's "directed the Gaben Laser Beam" at the EA login servers, taking Origin offline. Earlier this week, the group performed DDoS attacks on games and services like Dota 2, League of Legends, Club Penguin and Battle.net as Twitch streamer James "Phantoml0rd" Varga started streaming them on his Twitch channel. Varga believed that he was singled out because he was Twitch's top streamer at the time.

We have reached out to EA for comment and will update this post as more information comes to hand.

Update: The official EA support twitter account issued an update stating that it is "working to resolve connectivity/login issues affecting various platforms/games" and will provide more updates "when available."

Update 2: Origin and related login services are back online, according to the EA support's official twitter account.