Over recent months, there have been a number of high-profile DDOS attacks against eSports events around the world causing huge distruption to both the event and everybody wanting to enjoy the games online. While epic.LAN is a far smaller event, it doesn't mean to say we're immune to this sort of activity.

One of the common factors in these attacks is the use of Skype for team voice comms as it exposes the IP addresses of players making them an easy target, not to mention of course a few hundred people all using an external communications tool is always going to put extra pressure on network connections when it isn't really needed.

Now we don't want to go as far as blocking Skype, as it does have plenty of general uses for people to keep in contact with the outside world, but we'd certainly like to encourage all of our participants to use internal voice communications tools that we provide free of charge, such as Teamspeak and Mumble where you can host your own private channels locally to reduce the risk of any issues during the event.

If you need any assistance with these tools during the event, please do ask a member of staff. As always, we'll monitor any network traffic issues constantly and if necessary may have to look at limiting Skype use during the event if we notice any problems.