Tell me more ×
Arqade is a question and answer site for passionate videogamers on all platforms. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 16 down vote favorite

Are there people who map cheat the fog of war away in Starcraft 2 on Battle.net? Do I have to worry about this?

share|improve this question
3  
Could you elaborate on what you mean by that? How would he take advantage of you? Plus be sure that Blizzard would fix it and temp-ban people abusing it – Ivo Flipse Aug 4 '10 at 19:47
yeah what is a map hack and how is it different from other types of hacks? are they live editing files in their RAM or does this only work with custom homemade maps and custom games? – ioSamurai Sep 10 '10 at 20:56
For anyone in the dark, to "map hack" is to cheat in such a way that you see the entire map, without the fog of war. There are supposedly ways to cheat and get SC2 to show your opponents base and units. – Wikwocket Sep 11 '10 at 3:38

5 Answers

up vote 19 down vote

Fog of war cheats ("maphacks") definitely exist.

How to detect when you've been maphacked: If you suspect that you have been maphacked, load the replay. Watch the game from the perspective of your opponent. If he appears to be spending lots (abnormal amounts) of time hovering his screen over your base in the fog of war, chances are he is hacking, as in the following video.

This technique has been used to expose hackers quite a lot in the BETA phases. If you are able to detect the presence of a maphacker using this technique you can use the "report user" feature within battle.net and post an explanation in your report.

share|improve this answer
1  
any links to articles or threads about these maphackings I would be curious to see them. – Peter Recore Sep 10 '10 at 20:11
1  
does this only work on custom maps created by the user? or do I need to worry about blizzard maps and/or ladder games having this issue? – ioSamurai Sep 10 '10 at 20:51
@Ryan Maphack works anywhere. – I take Drukqs Jun 19 '11 at 15:40
up vote 1 down vote

Yes, map hacks have been available since early beta.

However, they aren't common, and most if not all publicly released map hacks are easily detected. There likely are unreleased map hacks that are still undetected, but it's unlikely that you'll encounter them on Battle.net.

share|improve this answer
Maphacks are common. They're rather easy to make as well. In Brood War you can maphack with a simple memory scanner. No coding required. – I take Drukqs Jun 19 '11 at 15:37
up vote 1 down vote

BLizzard continously monitors the user's process list, so if they find anything unusual, like a memory debug/editing tool, hacked game content etc. they simply ban the user.

share|improve this answer
2  
We all hope they will do! – F.S. Aug 5 '10 at 10:15
2  
I really hope they wouldn't. As a software developer, I have tools like this running all the time! I haven't been banned yet, thankfully. – Brad Apr 23 '11 at 16:04
up vote 0 down vote

The problem of map hacking has been overhyped since before Starcraft 1. I would not be seriously concerned about it.

Certainly people will accuse each other of map hacking, but these accusations have never been verified. Like alligators in the sewers, I'll believe it when I see it.

share|improve this answer
1  
It makes for a convenient excuse for a loss though. :) – Torpesh Aug 4 '10 at 20:21
3  
@Torpesh that and "lag" are the most popular ones people have. Either I have map hacks installed or everyone I play is on a 56k modem. – tzenes Aug 4 '10 at 20:28
3  
Believe it. For whatever reason the Blizzard forum thread in which I found this has been deleted. – Lee Sep 10 '10 at 20:36
@Lee so you'll notice a date on that, being August 4th. Since then there have been a number of hacks: Map hack, Warping Immortals Hack, Spawning Zerg as a Protoss, etc. At the time I wrote that post, none of these had been seen. Since then. As a result the information is dated. – tzenes Sep 10 '10 at 21:03
Map hacking is not overhyped. In SC1 everyone was doing it all the time. I have a few friends that were alleged maphackers, I've seen it. – Eric Nov 19 '10 at 1:34
up vote -3 down vote

According to this: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=140168

They are map hacks. This is extremely sad because when they announced SC2 required battle.net to play I assume this was to prevent map hacking by hosting the game on the server. But alas no. Blizzard has failed.

share|improve this answer
11  
"Failed" is pretty harsh. An un-hackable system doesn't exist. The real measure is how Blizzard responds to cheating. Can they stop it quickly? Will they ban cheaters? Et cetera. – JavadocMD Aug 4 '10 at 22:28
5  
@JavadocMD check out league of legends. its pointless to hack because the games are hosted on the server side therefore map hacks are impossible. (IE. they don't send you the location of units that are under the fog of war). depending on your definition of "unhackable" I believe that LoL is unhackable – Pyrolistical Aug 5 '10 at 20:18
While a absolutely unhackable system may not exist, storing secret data on the server rather than the client certainly ups the effort for map hacking by a few orders of magnitude. – Peter Recore Sep 10 '10 at 20:14
That isn't an option for most games. MMOs are the exception, since you can have your code run on the server instead of the client. – RCIX Nov 18 '10 at 23:33
1  
@Peter - you can't do that with a lockstep synchronized RTS multiplayer system. All data has to be present on client for it to be able to perfectly predict game (thus enabling only commands to be sent between peers, minimizing network traffic and allowing minimally encoded replays). See this article. – Petter H Jan 10 '11 at 7:29

protected by Oak♦ Feb 26 '12 at 20:48

This question is protected to prevent "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.