On Christmas Day 2014, a dedicated denial of service (DDoS) attack by a hacker group known as the Lizard Squad brought down Xbox Live for most of the day, and the Playstation Network for quite a bit longer. This occurred despite the hacker group having been supposedly dismantled for good only a week previously, taken down not by the FBI, but by a rival group of “whitehat” (friendly) hackers Finest Squad.

One has to wonder just what the motivations for such a widespread attack were. Was this a random act of dickishness? (Probably.) But maybe, just maybe, Lizard Squad were trying to remind us all — Christmas Special style — just how dependent we are on our gadgets and games, and that the true meaning of Christmas is spending time with family. One has to wonder whether this is what the average child (or 21 year old student) was contemplating as they turned on their brand new PS4 to receive an error message.

The attack finally ended when Kim Dotcom, founder of the encrypted upload service MegaUpload, offered the hackers 3,000 Lifetime accounts on MegaUpload, allowing gamers everywhere to enjoy their Christmas in peace.