Ping back to normal: GunZ stabilizes after a week of DDoS attacks

Anyone who tried to play GunZ during its first week knows the drill: ping above 10,000, matches freezing, crashes mid-fight, and a lobby that sometimes refused to load the room list or let you buy an item. Since Friday, August 21, it is a different game — ping is low and steady, and spikes are rare.

On the same Friday, Masangsoft finally explained what had been going on. The answer was not weak servers. It was attacks.

What the first week looked like

The pattern players reported was almost comically bad: about ten seconds of good ping with everyone playing normally — then two full minutes of lag where nobody could land a hit. Then it cleared, then it broke again.

The official Steam notices tell the same story. On August 15 alone, two days after launch, there were four announcements: two about connection failures and two about emergency reboots of the North American servers. Unscheduled maintenance followed on the 16th and the 18th.

What changed

The turnaround started on Monday, August 17, improving gradually through the week. The August 18 patch confirms it in one dry line: “Server connection stability has been improved.” That same patch fixed a bug that allowed Bounty items to be purchased abnormally — Masangsoft warned that items obtained that way will be retrieved, with penalties for anyone who exploited it deliberately.

Since Friday, the game holds long stretches of low ping and spikes have become the exception. In practice: you can duel again.

The cause: DDoS attacks from day one

On Friday, the game’s producer, known as PD Max, published a long message taking ownership of the problem. The core passage:

As expected, malicious packet attacks and large-scale DDoS attacks targeting server vulnerabilities ensued immediately upon launch, resulting in highly unstable service for the first few days. I am truly sorry to the users who were unable to connect or play the game normally during this time.

According to him, the problem is not new. During the beta, mass attacks had already hit other Masangsoft services, with the Korean GunZ service singled out. That forced the studio to re-examine its server architecture and defense systems from scratch — part of why the relaunch took so long and ran through five betas.

Now, the company says, firewalls and defense systems have been raised to a level that can “stably respond to most attacks”, with critical issues “largely resolved”.

For the connection drops and crashes that remain, a dedicated task force has been formed, treating the matter as top priority, and a specific channel will open on the official Discord to collect detailed reports.

What else was addressed

The message also covered points the community had been pressing on:

• Cheaters: detection systems remain active and will be strengthened. Reports are welcome, ideally with evidence — clips, match context, which tool was used.
• AI-generated art: Masangsoft acknowledged it underestimated how fans would react. It says AI is now used in a limited capacity (concept brainstorming, banners and ads) and that the vast majority of in-game assets are made by its artists and partner studios.
• The future: Leagues, Clan Wars and tournaments are in development, alongside new quests and game modes. The stated goal is to take GunZ to the esports stage.
• Monetization: the “GunZ Plus” model will be revealed soon, with a blunt promise — “there will be absolutely zero Pay-to-Win (P2W) elements.”

The community kept growing anyway

While the servers took a beating, players kept arriving. On August 16, the official ranking listed roughly 44,000 ranked players. Less than a week later it is past 113,000 — more than double.

At the top, the level race is tight: the leader sits at level 59, with several players right behind in the 50s. You can follow it live on our ranking page.

It helps that the game is running a 30% EXP bonus, now in its final stretch: three of the six days remain. If you were planning to grind levels, this is the window.

The rest of the package holds up too: in-game events are running, the cosmetics are good, and — crucially — there is no pay-to-win. Skill still decides the match.

The bottleneck now is learning to play

With the network stabilized, the remaining obstacle is a different one: GunZ is hard. More streamers are picking it up, and with them comes a rising search for tutorials — because newcomers run straight into K-Style, the set of animation-cancel techniques that defines high-level play and that no other game teaches.

If that is you, start with the beginner’s guide, sort out your settings and keybinds — which also covers what to do about your ping — and then take on K-Style from zero.

To check whether the servers are up before you launch the game, our status page shows online players and official notices in real time.