Unlike the exhilarating experience of watching the drama unfold for DreamForge users, the users of New Force Gaming Station were in utterly terrible moods.
They felt like they had been caught in a senseless disaster.
After roughly understanding the cause and effect of the matter, they couldn't bring themselves to blame DreamForge.
They could only urge New Force to quickly resolve the issue, restart the servers, and not delay their gaming.
With such a major incident occurring, New Force couldn't continue to play dead.
The official account had to show its face and issue a brief announcement to explain the situation —
[New Force Gaming Station servers have been subjected to malicious attacks. To avoid loss of player data, we had to temporarily shut down the servers.]
[The servers will be reopened once the problem is resolved. Please be patient and wait.]
They realized the seriousness of the problem.
But their understanding wasn't deep enough.
Even after witnessing the database being deleted with their own eyes, they felt that it might not be real — the database was so large, how could it be deleted so quickly?
It was probably just a scare tactic.
— Someone who neglects their own servers being attacked and, as soon as they have a free hand, goes straight for the opponent is unlikely to stop when they've achieved their goal!
But how to solve the problem?
Faced with the double crushing of technology and bandwidth, the person in charge, whose confidence had been completely shattered, couldn't make any guarantees.
He could only say things like "go all out" and "do everything possible."
But the servers had to be restarted.
Time was of the essence.
Not only for DreamForge but also for New Force.
— DreamForge's servers were still under attack. Even though New Force had been defeated, the intensity of the attack hadn't decreased much.
The struggle continued.
The reputation and revenue lost every minute and second that the servers were down also urged New Force to restart the servers as soon as possible.
In the interval while New Force was restarting its servers, global players… no, it was now global media and netizens!
Global media and netizens were all paying attention to this internet-domain defense war.
And therefore, they noticed in the first instance:
Avalon Networks suddenly crashed without warning!
Avalon Networks is a comprehensive internet company with businesses spanning computer communications, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and many other fields. Its business covers the globe and is a very strong multinational corporation.
Because it continuously caught the tailwinds of the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, it had been in the limelight quite a bit in the past two years.
But after Xu Meng unleashed the [Mind Cube] and made DreamForge's AI technology an open secret.
Avalon Networks' stock price immediately plummeted!
After that, no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't stop the continued decline of the stock price.
But stock price fluctuations can only affect investor confidence and the difficulty of corporate financing, and will not affect Avalon Networks' strong strength and technological foundation.
But now, this strong company suddenly collapsed.
All services were interrupted.
A large number of businesses were suspended.
It even affected hundreds of third-party companies.
Avalon Networks' technical team couldn't even find the cause of the sudden server crash.
In the end, netizens were the first to discover a clue —
On Avalon Networks' official website, all the original information had disappeared, leaving only a picture.
The picture had several large red words written on it:
[YOU KNOW WHO I AM]
These 5 words made the attack look like a personal vendetta.
The media and netizens were just exclaiming:
"Another company has been hacked!"
"Is there a hacker organization taking advantage of the chaos?"
"What hacker organization is so strong that it can breach Avalon Networks' defenses?!"
"A company that researches communications and artificial intelligence being defeated by hackers? What a joke!"
… …
In the eyes of outsiders, Avalon Networks had nothing to do with New Force or DreamForge; they had no grudges against each other.
So, in the eyes of netizens, this should be an isolated incident.
Until New Force restarted its own servers and discovered that the database had been cleared and the server configuration had been messed up.
Herman immediately asked the technical department to prepare to start the database backup.
After making a phone call, the person in charge immediately broke out in a cold sweat: "What do you mean the hot backup has been triggered?!"
Herman immediately glared over.
The person in charge stiffly raised his head: "The hot backup… I'm afraid it can't be used for the time being."
Herman, in his rage, finally felt that things were completely out of control!
— The losses had already become unbearably large!
The servers were blasted, a large amount of player data was lost, and New Force suffered astonishing economic and reputational losses…
At this moment, he clearly felt:
His position as CEO had reached its end.
Even if the battle ended later and DreamForge was defeated, it would be meaningless to them.
— From the moment the servers were defeated by DreamForge, they had already left the poker table.
Any spoils of war had nothing to do with them.
But while they didn't get any spoils, they had to swallow the cost.
Herman suddenly felt bitter and unspeakable.
But it wasn't over yet. The head of the security department looked at Herman in horror: "Our servers seem to be attacking the CIA!"
"And NetX!"
"Wait… it seems like there's also Aether Tech, the FBI, and… and the Department of Defense!!!"
He couldn't continue.
Herman, already ashen-faced, panicked: "The company is paying you to watch the show here?! Stop them!"
The worst situation he had envisioned was only losing his job and resigning to take responsibility.
But that doesn't include going to jail!!!
But the person in charge didn't make any move, just looked at him desperately and said, "I... I can't help it."
Except for cutting off the network and lying down to wait for death.
He had no other choice.
The head of the technical department was also a little desperate. He raised his phone and showed Herman their official website.
Like Avalon Network, there was no information about New Force on it, only a picture and a few words—
[YOU KNOW WHO I AM]
Herman's eyelids twitched wildly.
He seemed to be hallucinating, feeling that the five big red words were dripping blood!
"Cut off the network!"
"Shut down the server!"
He decided to lie down.
Waiting for death is better than going to jail!
At this point, New Force Entertainment's North American headquarters was completely destroyed, and officially withdrew from the battlefield.
The newest novels are first published on !
But New Force's withdrawal did not mean the end of the war.
On the contrary!
After New Force collapsed, the conflict quickly escalated!
Cirrus, one of the world's largest social networks, suddenly became laggy. Users would occasionally experience connection failures when browsing posts and posting updates.
VaultChain, which mainly deals with finance, blockchain, and cross-border payments, had network problems, and a large number of users reported payment failures to customer service.
Vinzon, which mainly deals with e-commerce and cloud computing, experienced a large number of product page losses and user order data errors.
......
The homepages of two more companies were hijacked, and the words [YOU KNOW WHO I AM] appeared as a demonstration.
At the same time, in Dreamforge's games, player latency was still increasing!
New users were also unable to log in.
Both sides in the battle were bearing the cost of the conflict.
---
At this point, even the most obtuse people realized—
This conflict was not just a conflict between Dreamforge and New Force.
But a full-scale war between Dreamforge and many large multinational corporations!!
Dreamforge was the first to experience problems.
So New Force, Avalon, Vinzon... and other large companies, took the lead in launching attacks on Dreamforge.
After Xu Meng closed Sprawl City and gained a chance to breathe, he immediately fought back!
A blitzkrieg, decisively collapsing New Force's servers.
Now, without flinching, he is simultaneously declaring war on all opponents!
At least one against seven!
Without losing ground in the slightest!
After figuring out the cause and effect, this conflict immediately became different!
Global media and netizens were not only paying attention to this matter, countless netizens began to cheer for Dreamforge!
Even American netizens who don't play games started cheering for Dreamforge.
Hoping that Dreamforge could "teach those big companies a lesson!"
The nosy media also gave this war in the digital world a rather imposing name—
[Bitstorm]!
In this frenzy of traffic, Dreamforge, which has always liked to interact with players, remained silent.
Until the Monster Hunter development team showed up.
They issued an apology for the serious server problems that occurred on the first day of the game's release, which caused high latency and affected the players' gaming experience.
---On the day the closed beta started, Xu Meng caught the development team and recorded an apology video.
However, this video was not used during the entire closed beta, which made many employees feel a little regretful.
Now that they had the opportunity, everyone immediately thought of this apology video.
Even when it was sent out, there was some subtle anticipation.
Global netizens were originally nervously following this tragic internet war—any company that was defeated would suffer hundreds of millions, or even billions, in losses!
Even pulling out the national bank's cash to burn wouldn't burn as fast as this war!
At this critical juncture, the Monster Hunter development team's operation stunned netizens around the world.
Especially game players.
Everyone originally imagined Xu Meng looking serious, sitting in the office and directing the battle!
Commanding a group of hackers and experts, and fiercely fighting against the technical teams of world-class giants!
Stern, serious, and exuding murderous aura!
But now, everyone saw Xu Meng sitting in front of the camera in the video, surrounded by the development team's employees, a group of people with painful expressions apologizing to the camera:
"I'm sorry!"
"Sorry!"
"Sumimasen!"
......
The gap between imagination and reality was so great that this serious apology video even looked a little comical and absurd.
Making everyone feel a little dazed.
The comment section of the announcement was full of question marks.
After a while, comments other than question marks emerged:
"No! Dude! Are you serious? You still have time to record an apology video right now?"
"Wait, this camera angle, this background, where do I seem to have seen it before?"
"I'm laughing to death, be serious! It's a moment of life and death!"
"Boss, show some backbone! Kill these giants!"
"I don't play Dreamforge's games, I don't know those big companies, and I don't know the grudges between you, but I like watching this the most! Cheer up! Fight! Don't stop!"
"Fight! Cool!"
......
Almost no one talked about the problems of Monster Hunter itself, they were all talking about this war in the digital world.
Of course, the development team would not respond to these questions.
Instead, Xu Meng suddenly jumped out and replied to a netizen:
"War? What war?"
