Blizzard has posted on its official blog regarding cheating in StarCraft 2, threatening those who get caught using hacks or mods with permanent bans.
The developer warns potential cheaters that it has multiple ways of detecting foul play, and encourages those who feel they’ve seen a suspected cheat to come to them with any information.
”Blizzard Entertainment has always taken active measures to combat cheating in our games,” reads the post, “and that’s of particular importance for a highly competitive game like StarCraft II. If a StarCraft II player is found to be cheating or using hacks or modifications in any form, then that player can be permanently banned from the game, as outlined in our end user license agreement.
To get a cheater banned you’ll need to provide Blizzard with the means to catch the offender. ”In the Score Screen,” write Blizzard, ”you’ll see that you can select a player’s name to open a drop-down menu. By selecting ‘More…’, and then ‘Report Player’, you will open a window. You can then select the option ‘Cheating’, and provide a description about what specifically aroused your suspicion. Including links to any relevant replays is also highly encouraged.”
Another effective way of fighting the good fight like Batman or Aquaman is to record the villain in action; videos can then be sent to hacks@blizzard.com for study. While Blizzard has its own software detection process, giving them a helping hand to track down cheaters is never a bad idea.
“We also employ software detection methods to discover hack program usage,” the post explains. ”While we can’t go into much detail about these methods, we can say that players caught cheating in this way are generally banned in waves. This is done so as to not tip off program developers regarding our detection methods, as well as to maximize the return on our detection efforts.”
And so Blizzard continues the endless battle against the continuously evolving world of competitive multiplayer cheating. Godspeed, brave warriors.
