[?] Spades hacking? - Page 147

On June 05 2012 22:13 zefreak wrote:
After GSTL tonight I find it hard to get worked up about this drama anymore. Anyone else who is sad when reading threads like this and feels like the sky is falling, just watch the GSTL vods if you can. SC2 is evolving into such a beautiful game and it really puts the drama in perspective.

On June 05 2012 22:19 floor exercise wrote:


You're being absolutely ridiculous. There is no doomsday scenario because someone cheated at a game online. It has been happening since the very beginning of competitive gaming and will always happen. Where do you people come up with this stuff?

On June 05 2012 21:37 Dubag wrote:
Of course the ID of the OP matters.
It's ridiculous to say otherwise. I'm surprised TL hasn't released the name yet. I can only hope they are trying to build an actual newsworthy post relating hacking to esports.

If I had played MKP in a BO7 and went through them, game by game, second by second I'm sure I could find various instances where he used his 'game-sense', took a risk and caught my plans out.

If I was to cry hack over that, the TL forums would laugh at me.

If I was DRG in the same situation and cried foul - it would be looked at under a much more powerful microscope.

It may even be fanboys against fanboys. People will have their opinions one way or the other. Some won't be swayed, some can see the evidence, some will wait for further proof.

Why this thread is not closed is beyond me.

An account with 1 post, claiming a semi-pro/pro player is a hacker is a big deal in the esports scene. Sure, it's only live tournaments, can't be that bad right? They will never win a GSL if they rely on map hacks. What about when they have online qualifiers for tourneys? and a hacker knocks out a legitimately better player and then gets crushed in the lan events? Not only is he pretending he has a chance, maybe to scrape some meager winnings from competing but he is also crippling a stronger player from making a living off the sport.

Nothing is going to be solved in this thread. It's just paint flinging. Close the thread, talk to the esports community, talk to the pro gamers and coaches and commentators and people behind the scenes. Right or wrong, there is no point throwing Spades under the bus just to say "we did good for esports".

On June 05 2012 22:30 Tippecanoe wrote:


Aside from the Savior and crew bw match trading incident that almost killed the BW scene. But yeah other than the doomsday scenarios that happened there wont be another one xD!!!

On June 05 2012 22:23 mememolly wrote:


dude, pros cheat in all forms of sport, even pro football players who earn millions have been found to throw games, you are seriously delusion if you think that a pro like spades wouldn't cheat in an online event

You're being absolutely ridiculous. There is no doomsday scenario because someone cheated at a game online. It has been happening since the very beginning of competitive gaming and will always happen. Where do you people come up with this stuff?

On June 05 2012 22:34 pingy[wen] wrote:
after watching the replays, there are lots of things that make me go, "hmmm", but nothing that is clear and definite evidence of hacking. i would have to side with Spades on this one and say he cant not reasonably be banned for anything. with that being said, i feel bad for him because he's inevitably been destroyed by this drolet person that hasn't been seen since his original post. we all make mistakes and read into things that arent there sometimes.

DROLET SHOW YOURSELF!

what you are saying makes sense but the conclusion you draw from it is completely wrong

hiding his identity is the best thing that the OP could have done

let's say it was Vortix (lucifron's brother/teammate and also top 16 EU grandmaster) who made that accusations (not saying that he was the one who did it) noone would have taken it as seriously because everyone would have been like "he's biased what he says can't possibly be true no matter how suspicious spades's actions may have looked.

if it was just some random guy everyone would have asked "how did you even get the replays", "you must be biased or you wouldn't make the thread", "you must be somehow related to lucifron so you are biased and lucifron is an idiot for thinking that spades was hacking just because he took some games off of him" .....

this way noone really knows what to think of the OP so the actually focus on what he has to say and not who he is which is the best thing that could happen in this situation

On June 05 2012 16:42 EtherealDeath wrote:
Here is a post on SC2SEA on a method that was used to catch a person using camera lock: http://www.sc2sea.com/showpost.php?p=99788&postcount=557

Edit - quick explanation of method. The camera lock sometimes doesn't just put no action. Instead it puts some fake actions in. Why it would do so I do not know. So, I looked for fake actions, which turned into a discovery of an action I believe to be physically impossible from a human using the interface.

I decided to try this analysis on Spade's replays. Now I could not find any combinations of the Hotkey 1,2,3 signature, so at first I thought it meant it cleared him. But then, I found something weird.

Recall in the OP that Spades has a 8 second window of camera stoppage in in the Antiga game at 11:02.

Here are the actions from 11:02 to 11:10. Yes I do have the default real time setting in SC2gears changed to game time. Initially I was puzzled by what it was telling me until I realized I needed to change this setting.


+ Show Spoiler +

Now I can see the hotkey switching in action, even when it is really fast. Of note is the scv selection deselection. This is also present at the beginning of the game but this is normal. This is simply dragging a box, selecting all the visible scvs, and then deselecting them by clicking somewhere on the ground. So, for a moment you will see a red circle around the selected scvs in the replay, before they are deselected. In fact you can see this happen all throughout early game, and this is normal.

I cannot see the red circle at all in the interval from 11:02 to 11:10, corresponding to this selection/deselection. I have stared at a twenty second chunk at each base intently over and over. The huge time window is so that I don't have to worry about looking at the timer. I am only trying to see that red circle pop up around an scv to show that it was selected. I cannot see this even at the slowest replay speed. He is either selecting and then deselecting them faster than I can imagine or something else is at play.

So at the moment I suspect that these hotkey selections and unit selection/deselection may be what a camera locking program is inserting as false actions. Either that, or something is wrong with SC2's replay storage, or somehow Spades can select/deselect faster than I can imagine. Why do the hotkey selections not disappear instantly you might ask? Well, the way the engine would interpret it is to keep the hotkey selection until another hotkey is pressed, or something else is done, so it cannot possible disappear in a flash. The instant unit select/deselection is thus the red flag to me.

If someone can explain this instantaneous selection/deselection please do. All other evidence aside, I have a hard time believing that a camera lock is not in play given this.

On June 05 2012 22:29 Valikyr wrote:

I agree that the community should focus less on drama and more on the actual game but when evidence that a pro is hacking is presented there should be drama. In almost all other cases of drama I would agree with you fully.

And yes the Korean GSL players are getting so freakishly good at this game it's a pleasure to watch.

On June 05 2012 22:38 mememolly wrote:


you should watch catz et al evaluate the evidence, it will change your mind

On June 05 2012 22:39 SCII-ALI wrote:



I like how this comment of all, is being ignored, eventho it should not.
Seems like pretty good evidence to me.

On June 05 2012 12:13 Mirhi wrote:
Well, while it's bad form to throw someone under the bus, I'm just going to do it because all this came out and I have a fact that actually matters.

Spades stream cheated during showmatches that he played while he lived with me at what was the Reign house. It's a carry over from the stream cheating that many Koreans do in the Korean prohouses (Both Spades and Artist have confirmed with me that Koreans frequently stream cheat in team leagues and showmatches against foreigners out of pride).

If ever I saw it happen when I was in the house, I would immediately try to stop them, but I know on occasion it still occured, most notably in a match Spades played against Gatored last year.

About maphacking, I have no idea and have no opinion on the matter other than either option wouldn't surprise me.

I would want to say though, that cheating occurs way more than people realize, and I actually would not be so hard on him for this evidence, even if it is true. Players better than Spades actively cheat, particularly stream cheat or simply ghosting, because of how easy it is.

Example - Leenock was over a player's shoulder at MLG Providence helping them during a game, giving them hints in Korean.

It's pretty common.

On June 05 2012 22:42 BoxingKangaroo wrote:


EtherealDeath showed his own evidence in this post wasn't conclusive in later posts. Check it out.

On June 05 2012 19:49 teamamerica wrote:



Also @Etheral - you should read threads you link, more then just one post. I read that thread before the mod note about it, I actually tried it on in sc2gears before just quoting it and realized what you did. Sc2 gears DOES NOT put fake actions in, at least in the sense it talked about in the post you linked. The guy who posted that in that thread was WRONG - he didn't account for time normalization. When you unchecked that it was fine, in that in the 20 second period where in the replay he was doing no options...guess what, you open in sc2 gears and there are no actions! What a fucking trip right? If I sound angry it's because you could have easily verified this like I did, instead of reposting it like a fucking monkey, that now 20 people will probably never realize you're wrong and think Spades is a maphacker forever.

I downloaded some maphacks and ran them vs AI and looked at my replays - when I use camera lock my apm drops to 0. Spades APM only drops to 0 at one time through the 7 games, and I can imagine he tabbed out or something. Iirc he was waiting on money for a depot, so maybe he stopped spamming. No matter how fast I tried to look into computers base in fog of war with camera lock on (there's a shortcut in the one I used where middleclicking turns on camera lock), my apm would always drop to 0.




If anything, with the map hacks on I could already see the minimap so I didn't need to look enemies base to see his army movement. But always having the right counters means looking at minimap, which I'm pretty sure he didn't (or he could have used production tab on second thought), if he used the same maphacks I downloaded (just a quick google, won't post link). Also, given that Spades was caught of position tons of times and lost, I'm more inclined to believe him.

I'm glad most of you fucking like to destroy people and bandwagon and maybe I'm being naive when I believe him, but I'd rather be naive and wrong most of the time in thinking people aren't hacking then be wrong in thinking they are one time.


tl:dr - Spades could have been maphacking. I don't offer proof either way. I'm saying Etherals shit was wrong, and as a disclaimer, I trust Spades.

On June 05 2012 22:39 SCII-ALI wrote:



I like how this comment of all, is being ignored, eventho it should not.
Seems like pretty good evidence to me.