Pokemon Go down: Hacking group claims credit for taking down servers 'with DDOS attack'

Users reported difficulty accessing the game on Saturday

Will Worley
Saturday 16 July 2016 16:11 BST
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Players catch Pokemon characters which appear on the screen of a smartphone
Players catch Pokemon characters which appear on the screen of a smartphone

A hacking group has claimed responsbility for taking down the Pokémon Go servers using a DDOS attack.

A cyber collective known as PoodleCorp announced on Twitter it was behind the action, but this claim is yet to be verified.

The account also retweeted a post by a user claiming to be the leader of PoodleCorp.

"Just was a lil test, we will do something on a larger scale soon," said the post by user XO.

Pokemon Vaporeon appears in the middle of Central Park

PoodleCorp has recently targeted high profile YouTubers such as Pewdiepie, according to Gearnuke.

A DDOS, or Distributed Denial of Service, is a way troublemakers crash servers by flooding them with so many requests every second that they cannot cope.

On Saturday, users across the US and Europe complained they were unable to access the game, or that it was freezing.

When news spread of the attack, players took to social media to voice their outrage.

Pokémon Go servers also crashed earlier in July soon after launching, due to unprecedented demand.

The incident is one of many international news stories relating to the game since its launch earlier in July.

This video of Pokémon Go players in Central Park is a glimpse of our dystopian future

A man crashed his car into a tree in New York on Friday, later admitting to police he had been distracted by the game.

On Thursday two men in San Diego fell off a cliff after they climbed over a fence in an attempt to catch the animated characters.

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