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On June 06 2012 07:05 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2012 06:29 sekritzzz wrote:On June 06 2012 05:46 Doodsmack wrote:On June 06 2012 05:34 sekritzzz wrote:
One thing which surprises me is how many people are asking for his identity (even if this might be a light-hearted thread). Why does identity matter when discussing an issue which doesn't require the OP's identity? If anything identity clouds the judgement of people.
If the OP's evidence/idea was stupid it would have been disregarded. If the OP's evidence/idea has a strong backbone, it gets the attention it deserves (which is happening right now). The only thing, the identity of this person "drolets" would do is to make people make irrational arguements which have nothing to do with the actual issue. Ex: "oh "x" person posted this to discredit him because he thought he would win more convincingly" , or " Oh "y" person only posted this because spades kept beating him in playhem". The question of whether identity should be revealed has implications for TL policy with respect future maphack allegations. I.e. does anonymity allow for exploitation of the mob mentality by means if exaggerated and embellished "evidence" without fear of accountability? On June 06 2012 05:44 plasmidghost wrote:On June 06 2012 05:34 sekritzzz wrote:
One thing which surprises me is how many people are asking for his identity (even if this might be a light-hearted thread). Why does identity matter when discussing an issue which doesn't require the OP's identity? If anything identity clouds the judgement of people.
If the OP's evidence/idea was stupid it would have been disregarded. If the OP's evidence/idea has a strong backbone, it gets the attention it deserves (which is happening right now). The only thing, the identity of this person "drolets" would do is to make people make irrational arguements which have nothing to do with the actual issue. Ex: "oh "x" person posted this to discredit him because he thought he would win more convincingly" , or " Oh "y" person only posted this because spades kept beating him in playhem". Well, you have to look at if someone wanted to slander Spades for some reason by exaggerating events. That could play a crucial part in determining whether or not the claims have some merit or if they're just to get back at Spades. I'd be willing to give anyone 1,000,000,000$, yes one billion, if they can exaggerate/abuse mob mentality enough to kick idra out of his team. He is disliked (and also liked!) by a lot of players but nobody can ever call him a hacker because there literally is zero evidence pointing to that fact nor would anyone believe it. I can definetly see the abuse of anonomity and mob mentality when there is a lack of information such as me accusing Thorzain of something like, " Oh Thorzain robbed me in Sweden", but the OP provided his PoV and gave you the replays to look at for yourself. What would identity add to the discussion other than take attention away from the replays in this situation? Anyways it is TL's call, and I would have personally used my own name if I was going to accuse someone of something, but anonimity in my opinion needs to be respected in some cases because otherwise things which need fixing would always stay underground due to fear of possible repercussions. Obviously idra is an irrelevant example here because he is a public personality whose games are well known. But with spades we're talking about a lesser known player who has hacked in the past. If you don't think the mob mentality can be exploited, just look at the first page of that thread and how many ppl immediately assumed the OP was correct without first watching the replays. They assumed based solely on the amount if bullet points the OP included as supposed evidence. If this person had used their real identity, they wouldn't be so quick to throw out exaggerations because they would be held accountable. Posts like that have the potential to insta-destroy a career, therefore the accuser damn well better be ready to back up his statements and show us his true face. And yes, whistleblowers in real life are subject to real-life dangers and threats but I don't think an Internet poster would be so threatened.
In this day, where you can find out almost everything about a person online, even stuff that could harm him in real life (destroy career / relationships/ bank account info) do you not have the right to stay anonymous when it's not absolutely necessary? Since Spades probably doesn't have such a hardcore fanbase, it's still food for thought to think about in the future right?
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On June 06 2012 07:15 petered wrote:
It is pretty obvious, based on the evidence presented, that the guy has some connection to Luci's team. Most likely, after the match Luci or his manager observed that Spades had surprisingly good counters and responses to Luci's army movements.
This guy heard it and decided to check it out after getting the replays from Luci. He thinks he finds cheating and decides to expose it.
As for whether or not it is Luci himself (highly unlikely) just check his match history. If he was playing games most of the day he wouldn't have time to put together that thread (which would be a pretty big time commitment).
Unfortunately I was quite ready to give Spades the benefit of the doubt since all the evidence was circumstantial. then he retires and all but confirms his guilt.
Well technically, he did not retire. He just left his team. And I don't think that really confirms his guilt, it's like Destiny being dismissed from his team. You can't keep sponsors with that kind of reputation, so Spades is going to play by himself.
I think the identity of the user is actually somewhat important. If he's Lucifron's brother for example, the guy would have a motive. If the person is both presenting his information in a biased way and he is biased himself, that just gives an even easier way of making the thread sound worse. Personally, I find it fishy that he needed to make a smurf account in order to present this information.
That has no bearing on whether or not Spades was hacking. I hope the guy wasn't because it's a sad thing to see for anyone, but we will see. I said it in a different thread, you could solve the whistleblowing problem by having a council (say, one person from each of the big teams or something, maybe not that many). The whistleblower forwards their OP to this council, they look at it, and if THEY determine that it's credible, they post it.
This solves the issue of 1) ensuring the information is at least potentially credible and worthy of bringing to light, and 2) protecting the identity of the whistleblower. It also prevents a biased thread engineered to create a reaction before a mob even views the replay. If people are predisposed to see maphacking, they're even more likely to find it when they actually watch the replays.
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I always love your blogs Gheed, this one is no different. I've been following the Spades drama with some amusement since we love us some drama in this community, well done us.
Thanks bud.
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This is pretty much what I did at work today, only much less exciting. t.t (tracked down who made an error in our system that screwed one of our customers pretty hard... even dug through the recycling bin and compared handwriting lol)
Good work sir!
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Regarding Drolets' level of English. There are plenty of native speakers that talk and write like that. Sad truth. But I agree that the guy isnt a native English-speaker. Not that it matters.
Regarding the whole maphacking thing, Blizzard has never been hot on hack-prevention or detection. And knowing that Blizzard/ Activision cares more about profit than the actual quality of their products, I don't see them doing anything about it. They will just banwave some people for 2 days each, update Warden, which will again be hacked etc etc etc. Hacks existed since 2010 but nobody gave a shit at that time, probably because people were too busy trying to figure out the game.
Right now, who dares to play public Diablo 3 with a level 60 character on Inferno? lol
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If gheed plays mafia ever the universe will implode.
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I was disappointed the spelling 'errors' weren't enough to find another profile in TeamLiquid forums. There are a number of other elements in the post that could be used if you had time or a good search program. For example, the use of ..., using capital letters for emphasis, the occasional lower-case i, excessive use of commas, sec instead of seconds, xel'naga instead of Xel'naga, cc instead of CC or oc or orbital, etc.
Like much of the Spades cheating proof, individually none of these are much but combined you could probably build a case that is circumstantial but arguable.
The person I found is http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/profile.php?user=SusaVile whose last post was apparently the same day the drolets account was created. It lists Portugal for nation which is close to the guess of a Spanish op.
Now, do I think SusaVile is drolets - No. And apologies to SusaVile unless I am right in which case it is time to confess!!! But I could make about as good a case for that as I've seen made about Spades hacking.
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As much as I don't like witch hunts, in this case, it was for the better cause. To ignore a maphacking pro simply shits all over the name of e-sports. Regarding this, I feel that if the mods reveal Drolet's actual identity to the general TL community, it would verge on borderline illegal action. It's like we're condemning this guy for bringing a maphacker to the light. REALLY? That would be more outrageous than the "witchhunt" for Spade. I really hope that they solve this internally, because if this is the Drolet from the Spanish SCII community that just wanted to bring a pro maphacker into the light, that's a fucking shame. What happened to Spades would seem like a fucking joke compared to what could potentially happen to this guy if his identity was revealed. Solve it internally, keep the community out of it. Same with future maphacking claims/accusations
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I would look in the IPL TAC 3 threads about Karont3 vs Quantic and vs x6. Someone that close to the team would be a big fan in their first international team event. I'm off to be a detective in those threads, wish me luck.
I'll update this post if I find anything.
Edit:
Okay, with some research into the aforementioned and related threads I have found a few possibilities. These are based on post counts, join dates, country, knowledge of the Karont3 team and not being a part of the K3 organization (if it was one of them I truly believe that the TL mods would have released that information already).
So there are under a half dozen possible posters, I'll give the possible reasons for each and their TL user names, I hope no one will assume they are actually the OP of the spades thread. I'm mostly doing this for fun, I have no outside knowledge of this matter. Seriously, don't belive me on my word, do your own research before you chose to point the finger at any of these guys, one of the reasons I'm leaving in all of them is to remind people how unsure I am. Even if I am right and one of these users is the poster of the allegations ALL OF THE OTHERS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.
Okay, with that out of the way we'll begin.
The first user I'm looking at is monx1e, he drew my attention by being the only Spaniard to post in both IPL TAC 3 threads about K3. (Qxg v K3: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=339648) and K3 vs x6 (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=341598). In one he talks about the improved play of AlastOr so clearly he has seen the guy play before. In the other he talks about how Lucifron is in University and isn't practicing much. Clearly these are both comments made by a dedicated fan of the team or of Spanish e-sports; he is aware of these players outside of this particular game.
He also posts in the K3 announcement thread (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=323240) which has only seven total posts so he is clearly on top of the K3 squad. He doesn't say anything that points to him in this thread though. moving on.
He posts in the Lucifron streaming thread (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=331379#19) saying that Luci should be featured.
That wraps it up for monx1e, a big fan of K3 and he follows the team in a serious way but nothing else to point to him.
Next up is Storm-Giant, another Spaniard who posted in one of the IPL TAC threads about K3. He has a recent join date, like monx1e, and a low post count. To me these speak against either of these guys being the culprit as they don't have anything to protect in this second level anonymity.
He posts in the EC cup (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=337902¤tpage=6#112) supporting Lucifron. Nothing odd here since he is a fan. He posts in the K3/x6 IPL TAC thread in response to someone saying that K3 is the weakest team defending them.
he is also a member of the Lucifron fan club (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=337166#20) and thats about it on him. I honestly think he is the least likely of the guys I found.
Third we have Berceno who is the first of these people to have been found posting in the "[?]Spades Hacking?" thread. He comes really late to that party though (his first post is #581) where he says he has lost all respect for Spades. He is totally convinced in his first post that Spades is a hacker but so were a large majority of people posting in that thread.
His post in the QxG/K3 IPL thread was what first lead me to him, he sates that Lucifron hasn't practiced since "1-5 may" which is the knowledge of either a very intent fan or someone in the know. His low post count and country of origin once again made him worth it for me to check.
He is also the first of these posters to post in the original Showmatch thread (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=339927¤tpage=2#26) since the user who requested these replays has to have watched the showmatch I couldn't help but see that as a big point in thinking he might be the poster.
He has also posted in the Luci fan club without actually being a member. I don't think this really affects my position on him though, these guys are all fans of Lucifron, that is why I'm looking at them.
Now with these three out of the way we move on to the two more interesting possibilities: a Spanish caster and a German member of TL with enough posts to have an identity he would want to protect.
First we have our German friend: StarVe.
In all honesty I wouldn't have looked twice at this guy if someone hadn't posted about "medevak" being a German spelling. He kept turning up in every thread I was looking at so I looked into him some more. In all honesty I don't think he is Drolets, if I was forced to guess I would go with the last guy I mention. However for the sake of completion I'll lay out the arguments in his favour.
He posted twice in the Spades is Hacking thread, however his first post in that thread was number 2000 something. He didn't seem to be following it earlier on.
He has 6 of the first 19 posts in the K3/x6 IPL TAC game and was clearly rooting for K3 but hey, he is European. I root for the NA teams most of the time. Regional pride and all that.
Honestly I think he is only a EU fan who is excited to see K3 do well as an all EU team, hell I've been rooting for them as an all Forgiener squad and because Lucifron and the rest of K3 have been playing really well (not counting the game against QxG). I would say this guy is totally exonerated. On to the last guy I looked at and the most likely in my opinion.
Finally we have the Spanish caster and most likely poster: LorCHsc2. This guy is a prominent member of the Spanish sc2 scene and, therefore, would have reason to keep his identity secret. Of all of the TL users I have mentioned or will mention he is the one who would have the best shot at getting these replays in my opinion.
He is the original poster of the IEM Spanish broadcast (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=317941#1) and has interviewed Vortix, Lucifron and AlastOr (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=328265#1) so he clearly has enough of a connection to these players to be able to request a replay from them which he could do without even alerting anyone on K3 to his suspicions; he could ask them for the replays simply to cast them, I'm sure they would say yes.
LorCH also has a similar writing style to the poster of the Spades thread, Drolets, whose profile can be viewed here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/profile.php?user=drolets
He has the overuse of commas and some English misspellings which, although not conclusive, make him seem like a strong possibility. He also says, in Drolets' thread Sorry 'bout my english :D. I speak better than i write... i think... which agrees with the above poster who felt that Drolets spoke more than he wrote.
Now, in addition to this he Streamed his analysis of the replays in Spanish, getting those stream views that people said CatZ was getting by taking this into the public eye. So there is a motive, not only to help Lucifron but also for himself.
He also posted this in the Spanish WCS qualifiers thread. (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=339847¤tpage=2#26) which, I'm sure you'll notice is the original source for the pictures which Drolets used in his Liquipidia edits.
He posts in Vortix Streaming, Lucifron's fan club, and a lot of various Spanish related threads. I could find no instances of him using the Medevak spelling though, which would have proved it to me. In fact the only times that spelling is used on TL are in Drolets' post and posts quoting him. Seriously, that is it.
LorCH also uses ellipses "..." a lot which is consistent with Drolets' post. (for example, this post: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=342248¤tpage=120#2384)
This guy has casted a lot of Lucifron games, a lot of K3 games and has interviewed at least 3/5ths of the K3 line-up. He has the connection to get the replays and the motive to hide his Identity as he has something to protect within this community. In my opinion he is the most likely candidate and I personally would not be surprised if it turns out that he is Drolets.
tl:dr look into LorCHsc2, he looks like he had motive, ability and opportunity to to be Drolets.
Edit 2: I've found LorCH's twitter and am attempting to translate from Spanish. Interestingly enough one of the people he is tweeting to is Storm-Giant who is also the only one to post a comment on LorCH's announcement that he would be streaming the replays of Spades/Lucifron
Edit 3: The person who informed LorCH, Karont3, Lucifron and Ryo was luciusvlm who is a TL user I saw pop up in a lot of the threads I was looking into.
My finance is sick of me being an internet detective so I'm off to bed. I may do more tomorrow. I hope someone will pick up where I left off though. Good luck to all you internet investigators!
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I don't see why it's necessary to know who drolets is. The information's there. Solid, demonstrable facts. Where it's coming from is irrelevant when you can view the replays in their entirety yourself.
I don't see why his identity needs to ever be revealed, nor do I understand why this thread even exists.
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Greed, you need to play mafia sometime
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The following is intended on being fairly light hearted, but also to demonstrate how easy it can be to collect 'evidence' in instances like this.
On June 06 2012 10:08 Promethelax wrote:
I would look in the IPL TAC 3 threads about Karont3 vs Quantic and vs x6. Someone that close to the team would be a big fan in their first international team event. I'm off to be a detective in those threads, wish me luck.
I'll update this post if I find anything.
I've been doing this and I'm starting to like 'shaaw' as a 'suspect' if you will.
There's a comment on his twitter that as far as I can Google translate:
Spanish - "Nose vosotros... pero para mi Spades utilizo hacks...."
Says (very roughly):
"Do not know you ... but for me using hacks .... Spades"
Could this mean "if not for me, you would not know that spades uses hacks????"
EDIT: it actually means "I don't know about you... but for me Spades uses hacks"
He also constantly comments on threads relating to Lucifron.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/search.php?q=&t=c&f=-1&u=shaaw&gb=date
He also had not commented for a couple of weeks before 'Spades-Gate'.
He often makes statements only someone who knows Lucifron would make:
On April 23 2012 22:51 shaaw wrote:
He just retired for 3-4 months, then he got back playing chossing less subjects at university so he can focus more on sc2.
On May 23 2012 21:51 shaaw wrote:
Lucifron is not leaving karont3
The flexibility that karont3 gives him with his studies is really huge for him. Besides, he his with is 2 brothers (vortix playing and ryo managing).
On April 23 2012 02:11 shaaw wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2012 00:51 iAmJeffReY wrote:
Doesn't lucifron have two brothers that both play as pros? vortix and ryu I thought. Yeah, vortix also has a stream (is on the op) and plays zerg. He beated sjow on The Gathering 2-0. Ryo also plays with protoss but less than their brothers, he is focusing on helping their brothers being a manager for them.
His English patterns match that of 'drolets' post somewhat. But that could be said for anyone who has a fair grasp of English with Spanish as their first language.
Of course, google translate is not reliable, all of my points are very shaky and I did this more out of sheer boredom than anything else.
Please take this with infinity grains of salt, as I do not really believe it is shaaw who posted as drolets, I just enjoyed doing some pseudo, terribly novice detective work.
I had fun anyway!
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Regardless of how conclusive the evidence is, EVERYONE should have the right to confront their accuser. Especially when a career is at stake.
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You've got it all wrong.
Drolets is an anagram for "oldster."
From google:
old·ster/ˈōldstər/
Noun:
An older person.
Synonyms:
old man - greybeard
Whitera is the grandpa toss.
A grandpa would be an oldster.
Whitera IS drelots.
ezpz
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On June 06 2012 11:23 RAGEMOAR The Pope wrote:
You've got it all wrong.
Drolets is an anagram for "oldster."
From google:
old·ster/ˈōldstər/
Noun:
An older person.
Synonyms:
old man - greybeard
Whitera is the grandpa toss.
A grandpa would be an oldster.
Whitera IS drelots.
ezpz
Well, you've outplayed me.
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On June 06 2012 10:48 .Aar wrote:
I don't see why it's necessary to know who drolets is. The information's there. Solid, demonstrable facts. Where it's coming from is irrelevant when you can view the replays in their entirety yourself.
I don't see why his identity needs to ever be revealed, nor do I understand why this thread even exists.
ITS DROLETS! GET EM BOYS!!!!
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On June 06 2012 10:59 CursivE wrote:The following is intended on being fairly light hearted, but also to demonstrate how easy it can be to collect 'evidence' in instances like this. Show nested quote +On June 06 2012 10:08 Promethelax wrote:
I would look in the IPL TAC 3 threads about Karont3 vs Quantic and vs x6. Someone that close to the team would be a big fan in their first international team event. I'm off to be a detective in those threads, wish me luck.
I'll update this post if I find anything. I've been doing this and I'm starting to like 'shaaw' as a 'suspect' if you will. There's a comment on his twitter that as far as I can Google translate: Spanish - "Nose vosotros... pero para mi Spades utilizo hacks...." Says (very roughly): "Do not know you ... but for me using hacks .... Spades" Could this mean "if not for me, you would not know that spades uses hacks????" He also constantly comments on threads relating to Lucifron. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/search.php?q=&t=c&f=-1&u=shaaw&gb=dateHe also had not commented for a couple of weeks before 'Spades-Gate'. He often makes statements only someone who knows Lucifron would make: Show nested quote +On April 23 2012 22:51 shaaw wrote:
He just retired for 3-4 months, then he got back playing chossing less subjects at university so he can focus more on sc2. Show nested quote +On May 23 2012 21:51 shaaw wrote:
Lucifron is not leaving karont3
The flexibility that karont3 gives him with his studies is really huge for him. Besides, he his with is 2 brothers (vortix playing and ryo managing). Show nested quote +On April 23 2012 02:11 shaaw wrote:On April 23 2012 00:51 iAmJeffReY wrote:
Doesn't lucifron have two brothers that both play as pros? vortix and ryu I thought. Yeah, vortix also has a stream (is on the op) and plays zerg. He beated sjow on The Gathering 2-0. Ryo also plays with protoss but less than their brothers, he is focusing on helping their brothers being a manager for them. His English patterns match that of 'drolets' post somewhat. But that could be said for anyone who has a fair grasp of English with Spanish as their first language. Of course, google translate is not reliable, all of my points are very shaky and I did this more out of sheer boredom than anything else. Please take this with infinity grains of salt, as I do not really believe it is shaaw who posted as drolets, I just enjoyed doing some pseudo, terribly novice detective work. I had fun anyway!
Glad to see I'm not the only one being a crazy internet detective and wasting all their time. Good call looking into twitter. I'm off to the twits!
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I don't have a problem with him/her staying anonymous, I have a problem with the post they made. They are definitely not a pro player, then again maybe they could be I’ve seen pro players that are good players, but terrible at replay analyses, and drolets is terrible at it. Out of the forty-five or so actions he/she listed, only about four of them were proper suspicious actions for possible hacking, the rest were completely wrong, they obviously do not have a high level understanding of Terran in general.
None of those seven replays had anything to make a pro player any more then suspicious certainly not enough to publicly say the person in question hacks. I would say that is the reason for their anonymity.
The replay pack however after analysing a chuck of it, several replays show strong indications of suspicious activity.
That does not take away the fact that, the starting poster did a bad job, and started the hunt with bad evidence.
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On June 06 2012 12:03 VonDarkmore wrote:
I don't have a problem with him/her staying anonymous, I have a problem with the post they made. They are definitely not a pro player, then again maybe they could be I’ve seen pro players that are good players, but terrible at replay analyses, and drolets is terrible at it. Out of the forty-five or so actions he/she listed, only about four of them were proper suspicious actions for possible hacking, the rest were completely wrong, they obviously do not have a high level understanding of Terran in general.
None of those seven replays had anything to make a pro player any more then suspicious certainly not enough to publicly say the person in question hacks. I would say that is the reason for their anonymity.
The replay pack however after analysing a chuck of it, several replays show strong indications of suspicious activity.
That does not take away the fact that, the starting poster did a bad job, and started the hunt with bad evidence.
Yeah, only terrible terrans like Illusion, Merz, Drewbie, and Painuser agreed with the OP.
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EPT
