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Scene from the final day of the SquidCraft Games: The ideas for the competition are provided by the Netflix series »Squid Game«
Photo: Twitch Rivals
Usually, the Principality of Andorra hardly plays a role in the tech and gaming press.
These days, however, the state located between Spain and France is making headlines worldwide – because there have recently been several internet disruptions there.
And not because of a technical defect, but possibly because strangers wanted to boot out the "Minecraft" players from Andorra in a highly endowed online tournament.
What exactly was going on?
What is clear is that there have been several overload attacks on the state telephone company Andorra Telecom, which is the only one providing the country with Internet, in the past few days.
According to the provider, such distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS attacks) ensured that some customers were temporarily no longer able to use the Internet as usual on Friday and Saturday, neither stationary nor via mobile communications.
On Monday, the company wrote on Twitter that it was again the victim of a DDoS attack.
NetBlocks had previously documented the internet problems in Andorra.
It was about 100,000 euros in prize money
The main reason that the attacks were related to a “Minecraft” tournament is a temporal connection: while the attacks were taking place, a large online competition called SquidCraft Games, which was based on the Netflix series “Squid Game”, was running and which also featured well-known players living in Andorra.
A total of 150 participants competed for 100,000 euros in the competition, which was realized with a modification for »Minecraft«.
Similar to the well-known Netflix series, they faced various challenges until finally only one person remained (in this case a streamer named Ollie).
The six-day event, which ended on Monday, could be followed live on the Twitch streaming platform.
More than two million viewers tuned in at the same time for the grand finale – most of them from Spanish-speaking countries.
Internet gone - and the chance to win too
When they suddenly couldn't access the internet to continue playing, this had annoying consequences for some participants from Andorra: According to the rules of the tournament, they were eliminated and thus lost their chance of winning - which in turn increased the chances of other players to end up victorious standing there.
So it may well be that it was actually an attempt at manipulation by third parties, for example by fans or anti-fans of certain streamers or by internet trolls who just wanted to mess up the competition.
According to media reports, the disruptions to the network cost at least eight participants from Andorra their chance to stay in the competition for around 100,000 euros.
The streamers El Rubius and Auron, who are each followed by several million people on social networks, were among those who suffered.
According to the sports newspaper "Marca", there were also participants from Andorra who were able to continue.
DDoS attacks require hardly any hacking knowledge
The provider Andorra Telecom wrote on Twitter on Saturday that the attacks were aimed at disrupting "YouTuber".
The company also shared media reports on the attacks on its Twitter account in the days that followed.
In order to be able to carry out DDoS attacks, you don't have to be a master hacker: the tools or botnets required for such attacks can also be rented.
According to information from The Record, a rental service was used in this case.
Incidentally, it is no coincidence that many well-known Spanish-speaking video makers from Andorra are posting videos online: for most YouTubers and streamers, their move to the Principality may have brought tax advantages.
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