Byond is an old, free game engine that’s been around since at least the early 2000s in games like Space Station 13, to cite one we’ve talked about recently. It’s also been the subject of a sustained DDoS attack, according to a MassivelyOP report, that’s now into at least it’s third week.
And why, exactly, would someone launch a DDoS attack against an obscure game engine, and keep it up for this long? According to a now-deleted Reddit post, available via the Wayback Machine, a group calling itself “the international free and open-source software community” is doing it to pressure Byond creator LummoxJR into making the software open source.
“Attacks on Byond servers are a symptom of your obstinance,” the extremely talking-like-Sephiroth message states. “They will persist as long as you ignore the voices of those who keep your platform afloat. We demand you voluntarily side with progress.
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“Choose: Let Byond die as a proprietary relic, or let it rise as a free project. Time is running out.”
Whether or not that’s a legitimate claim, I cannot say. It certainly doesn’t sound like a good reason to throw up a sustained DDoS attack, but I’ve been on the internet long enough to know that ‘this sounds too stupid to be true’ is at best 50/50 when it comes to predicting whether something actually is true.
In a Reddit thread that went up not long after the attack began, appropriately entitled “What kind of maniac DDoSes Byond?” users suggested other possible rationales for the attack, most of them variants on “some guy got mad on the internet.” LummoxJr implied in the thread that they’re not sure about the real reason for the DDoS, but wrote that they’d “heard a rumor as to how this started, and it doesn’t really involve Byond; it was just a grudge between someone and a server that escalated.”
Whatever initially touched it out, the fires are still burning: The Byond website remains inaccessible, and as of the latest update to the DDoS Downtime Megathread, mitigation efforts are ongoing but there’s no ETA for a full restoration. In a separate thread posted May 23, LummoxJR said they’re “still dealing with the thing,” but also took a kind of bright-side view of the ongoing mess.
“I know the current situation has pushed a lot of us into closer contact than normal, and in many ways that’s a good thing,” they wrote. “But there have been some folks coming into new spaces hot, especially thinking they have a new idea that actually isn’t new. I know it comes from a good place. Let’s just all remember to show each other a little extra leeway and respect.”
And in good news for people who actually use Byond, it’s not out of reach: The website is down but some parts of it, including bug reports and downloads, are now being hosted on Discord.