Popular Steam Game Taken Down by "Massive Attack"

The developers of one of the most popular games on Steam have confirmed servers had to be taken down this morning due to a "massive attack." If you've noticed servers issues lately and fewer people playing Goose Goose Duck, it's because the game has been under constant attack since last month when it began to explode in popularity, which explains how it went from 640,324 players -- the 8th highest on Steam ever -- to just 1,413. The servers have been going down like crazy, and they once again had to be taken down today.

According to developer Gaggle Studios, the attack this morning was "massive," and thus servers had to be taken offline for maintenance and reinforcement. Thankfully, no data was comprised in the process.

"Our success has been incredible, and I want to thank all our players once again," reads the update. "We underwent a massive attack this morning and subsequently took our servers down to maintain and reinforce them. None of your data was compromised."

The update continues, revealing the attacks have been going on for roughly two months: "We've been undergoing attacks for approximately two months now," adds the update. "We've mentioned it once mid-December, but we made a decision to avoid mentioning it further so as to not alarm players. The combination of the attack and our high player numbers (600 thousand CCU's) left us vulnerable."

Hopefully, the worse of it is now behind Gaggle Studios and players of the game, as the former has hired cybersecurity specialists. Until then, servers won't be back proper until Wednesday.

"We have hired very talented cybersecurity specialists to help us. We don't want to say much beyond this, because we don't want to expose specific ways in which we are trying to safeguard ourselves," reads the update. "Our plan is to come back on Wednesday at 5 PM EST. We want to do the best that we can to secure as much as possible, instead of rushing back tonight. We will keep everyone posted if anything changes. I want to thank all our players for their patience and understanding during this time. We are doing everything that we can. We are very grateful for our community's support."

It remains to be seen what type of impact this with have on the game's popularity and longevity. It's been quickly climbing the Steam charts and look poised to be one of the next big games, but now much of this is up in the air.