A serious security flaw discovered in PHP this week sent several online games scrambling into damage control, with Final Fantasy 14 and Umamusume: Pretty Derby among the casualties.
PHP underpins a staggering number of websites and online services, not just games, so when a vulnerability like this surfaces, it tends to ripple out fast. Final Fantasy 14's official lodestone site confirmed security "enhancements" were being rolled out to the MMO's patch servers, which meant new logins got switched off for a while. Logins are back now, though the server back-up feature for save data is still down.
Umamusume: Pretty Derby had it worse, going fully offline since its server infrastructure runs on PHP. Developer Cygames says no exploitation actually happened, and both the Japanese and global servers are back up now, with players getting a batch of in-game currency as an apology for the inconvenience.
Path of Titans, the in-beta dinosaur MMO, is still down as of now. Alderon Games warned on X that the game and its website could be offline for up to three days as a precaution, but stressed no player data was compromised.
None of this makes for a fun week if you were mid-raid or mid-race when the lights went out, but it's a decent reminder of how much of the internet, games included, is quietly held up by the same handful of building blocks. Somewhere out there, a bunch of exhausted sysadmins deserve a drink.
