EPT
: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/cx0z72/current_state_of_maphack_in_starcraft_ii_2019/Disclaimer :
This thread Is not an advertisement for maphack.
This was only made In order to gather as much informations as possible about the current state of this type of hack in Starcraft 2 so people can be more aware of this problem.
Most of people think maphack is dead/only present at high level or is just a « reveal the map » hack, but it’s much more complicated than that. I hope It will help to rise awarness about this, and make blizzard do something about it.
I’m keeping an eye on hack communities of my differents games for years, and i recently wanted to see what changed about the MH part in SC2 since the last time i checked (2016).
It took me 2 month to have all the informations I wanted, and here is the result
Also, no name/direct access to the hack will be revealed in public, for 2 mains reasons :
- 99% chances they are not using their real name/game tag, so it’s useless I think.
- It could help some people to find them and then buy the hack.
Blizzard probably already know about this (specially the last one i will talk about), but If you can prove me in PM that you are from blizzard staff I’ll of course share you the uncensored pictures + other screens that I can’t post here.
English is not my native language, so there will be mistakes in the thread and the video, feel free to correct me
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
I’ll talk about 2 differents hack I found, one seems to be the most popular/powerful hack tool for a long time, the other one have less feature but still work great.
I’m also pretty sure there is a third one, but i couldn’t find after a month of research.
1) Generalities
To begin with, MH is not that simple to find.
I remember in 2014/2015, it was pretty easy to find one by just googling « SC2 maphack ».
Some of them were free to use, best ones (better UI + other features) were pretty expensives like ValiantChaos’s maphack (one of the most famous at the time).
Then around 2015/2016 (can’t remember exactly), a big update of Warden, the Blizzard anti cheat system, stopped most of them.
It was impossible to find one for free, and it was very rare to play against it on the ladder.
Since this update, if you really want one you now require to pay a monthly fee to the hacker in order to use his sofware and have the new versions each time an official patch is published by blizzard.
It’s also a lot harder to find them, and unless you know the right place to get this type of hack (not specifically for SC2, but for hacks in general) it’s very unlikely you’ll be able to find what you want (or you’ll be scammed with a fake MH, it happens very often from what i can read in this community).
2) First hack
The first one took me a week to find.
He offered a free trial of 3 days, that allowed me to see everything that can be done with this software .
Once the trial is over, you are supposed to send back a document included in the folder, and the hacker is supposed to send you back a new version of the software, this time linked to your PC (i guess the software creates a specific signature of your PC, maybe linked to your motherboard).
Here are some screens of the hack interface: https://imgur.com/a/HkyqMpP
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/Pc5XcT2.jpg)
Ingame Overlay
I used it on a throwaway account for 48h, then deleted it.
Here is a commentated gameplay with it (it’s impossible to reccord the ingame overlay no matter what i tried with OBS, so i can’t really show it in action) :
TLDW :
It include some basics feature :
- Sound alert for macro (upcoming supply block, probe production stopped…) or enemy army (drop, big move out… .
- Second minimap with unit movement and building placement.- Production tab.
- Energy left for scans/chronos….
It’s a bit disturbing at first to have another overlay to look at, just like in gold league when it’s hard to check frequently the minimap, but it’s obvioulsy worth it.
Also, in the video someone spotted me, I PMed him after i stopped reccording to tell him what i was doing, i’ll link him this thread so hello to you buddy if you see this ^^
I used it for 4-5 games at low mmr (at low mmr, my macro was good enough so i could talk and properly expain without losing because of macro errors) in the videos just in order to explain how it’s used, but after that i used another account to test how far I could go with this.
The 2nd account was with my real mmr (4k7, i'm very stable usually, rarely drop below 4k6), and i’ve done 15 games with it. I wanted to know how big the impact was, maybe you just get out macro very quickly after all.
I managed to reach 5k mmr (my peak mmr was 4800 with my main account) with a 14-1 ratio, the only lose being due to a Zerg late game with mass infestors broolords.
I feel like i could have reach much higher, but i prefered to stop here since it was enough.
This is indeed a very strong tool, that allows people who know how the game works (counter, strategy, build analysis) to stop loosing to anything linked to harass/scout. You can only lose due to micro error during fight or a big out macro.
However, the maphack feature itself is pretty useless if you don’t understand well enough the game of course, i think below mid/high diamond it’s 100% useless.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
3) Second hack
During my research, I also heard about 2 other maphack.
I never found enough informations about the first one, but the second one was very interesting.It seems like it’s the most popular and avanced hack tool for SC2, I think you can’t even call this a maphack anymore since it’s just a small feature in this one.
This one was a bit harder to find, and the person selling it seems to have a very well organised marketplace (honestly impressed by all his system).
Screen of his Discord, including detailes features of the hack : https://imgur.com/a/AozxjtK
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/uDHe8QJ.png)
166 peoples on it, a bit bigger than i expected tbh
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/wzpbNPm.png)
Prices : similar to the first hack I found.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/7ZzLkZ2.png)
Payement : much more different this time. The first hacker gave me a PayPal link, but this one want to be payed in Bitcoin !
To obtain the hack, once you sent the bitcoint to his wallet, the bot will check and send you a license key to unlock the hack (you can dowload it in a specific channel on his discord, once you have the « Free trial » or « member » role). This time you don’t have to send back a document to link kit to your PC, you only need a license key.
The trial last for 72h this time.
Screen of differents features of the hack when you unlock the software with a license key, including auto creep spread example : https://imgur.com/a/dJW49A3
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/6JoZClZ.png)
Aside form the production tab and economy informations, the new ingame UI is interesting
Since i didn’t want to play again with something like that in ladder, I asked one my friend to test it in custom games with me.
Replays :
Auto Blink PvP : https://drop.sc/replay/11541493
AOE dodge TvP : https://drop.sc/replay/11541495
ZvP with various hack activated, such as auto creep spread, auto inject and auto AOE dodge : https://drop.sc/replay/11541492
I'm 3k9-4k Z, he's 4k5-4k6 P.
ZvZ split hack, game lagged pretty hard for both of us during apm peak (over 6k5 apm sometimes) : https://drop.sc/replay/11541494
Split hack is the most obvious of all, since it need a very big apm to work
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/a7ipzfx.png)
15mn game, guess which I am ?
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/vHZao4n.png)
Auto split typical APM
Each time an official patch is out, the hack is patched as well, most of the time very quickly after the official release
Patches for comparison![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/GMiJ9lA.png)
As you can see, you can hardly just call that a maphack.
It help a lot with auto split, and change pretty much everything as a Zerg since auto creep spread and auto inject are very effective.
There are a lot of features i can't show because there are too much of them, but most of them are macro help.
For example, if you select 12 workers and right click a gas, 3 of them will automatically mine vespene gas and the other ones wont stop what they are doing.
Terran also become very weak since you can prevent any form of harass
Etc...
I only found these 2 hacks in 1 month, but there are probably a lot more in specific community such as Russian or KR community.For both hack, i found at least 250 people using them, most of them between 4k8-5k5, and some of them seems to be GM on EU/NA or KR :
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/3iBSPVC.png)
Profile picture of one of the people i found in the second hack servor
This hack is very scary, because this is clearly a very well organised and powerful machine.
Just imagine a tool like this in the hands of some low/mid gm players, they could easily qualify for WCS for example since qualifiers are online (not saying it happened in the past, maybe it did, i'm just saying it could happen).
I have no idea of how the owner of this could be punished since it would be very hard to find any personnal informations about him
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
This conclude this thread, I hope you enjoyed it
I problably forgot some details, so ask your questions in the comments and I'll try to answer them if I can (you can ask in french if you want).
Again, It's just in order for most people to know about the current state of this : It's not that rare and It's much more developped than just a maphack.
I hope you'll play a healthy ladder, but if you meet one of them don't forget to still report them
