Blizzard authentication servers down, delays across all games

This article is brought to you by StatBanana, the best Overwatch strategy tool.

If you were planning on spending your entire Friday gaming, you might be in for a bit of a delay. Blizzard Entertainment reported earlier today that its authentication servers are having issues.

This issue affects players on both PC and console. Server issues are reportedly affecting all Blizzard games, like Overwatch, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and even Destiny 2 if players are still using the Battle.net launcher. The initial tweet from Blizzard’s customer service account was made at 12:19pm CT after players began noticing the delays.

As a result of the authentication servers having issues, players may have trouble logging into their Blizzard-related accounts. Players may be placed in a virtual “queue” to log in. And due to the issues, these queue times are enormous and not accurate whatsoever. Some Overwatch players were notified of estimated queue times ranging from three hours to nearly eight hours.

Initial reports of server outages began appearing at approximately 11:30pm CT on Reddit and other social media outlets. Predictably, within the hour, frustrated players had made some pretty good memes about the server issues.

At 1:50pm CT, Blizzard apologized for the outages and reminded players that the company is working on a resolution. For now, players can keep attempting to log into games, but it may be a lengthy delay before the servers are working as intended.

Update June 7, 3:00pm CT: Blizzard Entertainment has released another statement apologizing for the outages and offers no estimated time that they will be resolved.

Update June 7, 5:00pm CT: Blizzard Entertainment announced the server issues have been resolved for most customers. They recommend restarting the Battle.net app for optimal performance. The outages lasted upwards of five hours in some areas.