Battlefield Hardline, the police-show twist on Electronic Arts' military series, has had a mostly smooth launch with its multiplayer so far, but Xbox One players did suffer connectivity problems on day one. That was because of a DDoS attack, according to the game's official Twitter.
We've identified the connectivity issues on Xbox One are due to DDoS attack and working to resolve. Apologies for the inconvenience.
— Battlefield (@Battlefield) March 18, 2015
A distributed denial-of-service attack is, more or less, internet vandalism. Some malefactor floods the target's servers with more traffic than it can handle, crashing them or at least slowing them down or keeping others out.
Attacks against high-profile video games and consoles are common — Shuhei Yoshida, PlayStation's director of worldwide studios, said at GDC they face one every day. Over Christmas, hackers brought down PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, with PSN being down for so long Sony offered members freebies for the inconvenience.
Batllefield Hardline faced additional scrutiny because of the disastrous multiplayer problems its predecessor, Battlefield 4, faced for months after its October 2013 launch. In July, Hardline developer Visceral Games delayed the game from its original Oct. 21 release date, saying it needed more time to improve the game, particularly its multiplayer. Hardline kicked off a public beta during E3 2014.
For more on Battlefield Hardline, see Polygon's review. It has been provisionally scored a 7 while reviewers keep an eye on how the game, with its heavy multiplayer component, manages those expectations.