US publishing giant Electronic Arts has had some issues with its online functionality after a malicious attack.

In a post on Twitter (below), the EA Help account reported that its servers had been hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack which took them offline. This has meant that users have been unable to play games like FIFA 2020, Apex Legends and Battlefield, in addition to being stopped from logging into the company's Origin online service.

The issues started yesterday (Tuesday, April 14th) and have persisted up until the time of writing.

"Something's up with our online services, but we're on it," EA says on its official help website.

"In the meantime, you might not be able to connect to online modes, buy games on Origin, or log in to your account. We’ll get you back in your game as soon as we can."

These issues come amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic which has seen people around the world encouraged to stay in their homes in order to slow and eventually halt the spread of the virus. Online games have become one way of passing the time, with Microsoft reporting record numbers on its services and Steam reporting several all-time high concurrent user figures in a row.

Today we experienced a series of DDoS attacks that we’ve now been able to resolve. If you’re still having trouble logging in, please contact us.

— EA Help (@EAHelp) April 15, 2020