07:06 KST - method linked here has been disproved here
10:54 KST - Find a full timeline of pro comments (including Spades) in the topic here.
08:47 KST - Summary: Accusations of maphacking have the potential to destroy a player's career if left unaddressed. Because of the potential consequences, we should be careful about accepting unproven accusations. The principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' should be applied here. That does not mean that there has been a conclusion about this case, however, which is why this thread remains tentatively open.
Please discuss with caution and use evidence to back up your claims.
(also a summary post by an unnamed pro on reddit here)
On June 05 2012 17:39 jaaaaakke wrote: Although I am not supporting the death threats in any shape or form, I can atleast rationalize why someone would send them. If he cheated/hacked me out of thousands of dollars, I would be pissed.
Regardless of if Spades hacked or not, my question to you is this:
You're telling me if I played a match between a fellow TLer for $1000, and I maphacked to win it, even though this match doesn't involve you in the slightest, you could honestly justify threatening to kill me?
On June 05 2012 17:28 Alacar wrote: Not when you are dealing with a guy who was Rank #1 GM on NA. ...I don't really know what else to say. This action is equivalent to a pro player "forgetting to make workers" early game for 20 seconds or however long his scout was in Lucifron's base. It's just not something you do. I don't have "reasonable doubt" on this point.
First, it is confirmed he was a mid-level GM with no cheating at all, correct? And he was #1 GM on NA which everyone says is easier than EU and Korea, right? How long was he number 1 and at what point was it in the season?
If he was GM [but not pro-level] without cheating, dropped down to Masters because he lost focus, and then next season reached #1 GM two plausible explanations are available: 1. he was cheating or 2. he regained focus and grinded out a bunch of games to get enough points to be at the top for a few days or weeks. I mean, I can't be the only one who remembers all the jokes about NA GM. This is the first time I've even seen it taken seriously, outside of a general 'better to be GM than just Masters' sort of way.
Let's see the replays of Spades beating Stephano and DeMuslim and all the other high GMs when Spades was number 1. That is, if he didn't just beat a bunch of other mid-level GMs early in the season to get enough points to be at the top.
Again, not saying there is evidence he is innocent, or even that I think he is innocent. I just believe the word "proof" has a very different definition to many people in these threads.
On June 05 2012 17:39 jaaaaakke wrote: Although I am not supporting the death threats in any shape or form, I can atleast rationalize why someone would send them. If he cheated/hacked me out of thousands of dollars, I would be pissed.
Regardless of if Spades hacked or not, my question to you is this:
You're telling me if I played a match between a fellow TLer for $1000, and I maphacked to win it, even though this match doesn't involve you in the slightest, you could honestly justify threatening to kill me?
That is the stupidest fucking logic I've heard.
Hm? No.
And again, I do not think death threats are ever right. All I am saying is that say I play a match and was robbed money, and the opponent used hacks to cheat me out of my winnings, I would be pissed.
That's all. I can understand the rationality of someone losing and sending the threats (even though they are wrong and committing a felony in the process).
On June 05 2012 17:22 Martijn wrote: Eyey, if it's all the same. I understand it's relevant, but it's easier on me if what I say on Twitter stays there. Saves me from waking up to people I've never heard of posting "boohoo crybaby" and the like. It's not that I feel like what I say is any less public there, but that's followers I don't need if you get what I'm saying. So consider that a personal request, thanks.
Now to discuss the mess at hand. Please note my main role with the westernwolves is as a commentator and the work I do managing and dealing with communities is purely secondary. In the end I only give the guy that signs the budget a recommendation. Sure so far they've always taken them, but in no way does me posting on Twitter; "I don't see how we can keep Spades on the team" mean "Spades isn't going to stay on the team". People much wiser than me sign off on the budget.
That said, I certainly meant what I posted there. Cheater or not, the only way Spades can come out of this with a reputation worth anything is if he proves conclusively he didn't cheat. Now the only thing harder than proving someone cheated is perhaps that someone didn't cheat. There is no way you can explain every action in a game afterwards and no way to prove you Didn't cheat. The best Spades could've hoped for was that people looked at this thread and the circumstancesand reached the conclusion there's not enough there to state he's cheating.
Now there's a few things that really troubled me throughout this. First off the blatantly bogus OP . IP match or not, I'm more convinced this is some cowards alt than anything. If you're going to make huge claims like this, put your own reputation at stake, you're certainly setting out to destroy someone else's. Taking in to account most the points made weren't proof of anything or just false, this went way further than it should have.
Though I shouldn't have to post this, here's how you Should handle a situation like this; if you find someone suspicious, contact 1 the admins 2 the team. They are going to be more suited than you to analyze this situation and are the ones that should if necessary act on this. Now in this case, they're one and the same, the WesternWolves. WW is a team with a wide array of players among several games, they're reputation is what sponsors bank on. Just like any team of this sort, they'll do whatever is needed to ensure their reputation is a legitimate one (obviously does not include creating bogus alts and accusing people). We would welcome that kind of feedback, investigate it to the fullest and probably thank you for it afterwards regardless of what is found!
A team will then generally contact uninvolved players and ask them to review the games. They will review these games in private, not on a stream to generate more sensation and leech the situation for every viewer they can get. If you want to know how far we got with this i we managed to contact 2 mouz players, but before anything could be reviewed, Spades was already getting hung out to dry. It is in no way TL or Reddits job to police players, we are quite capable of that as teams thank you very much.
What bothered me personally is what Mirhi posted and that I really can't get over. I have know Mirhi longer than almost anyone here and I couldn't believe what I was reading. I've known Frank from as far back as when he worked under me in CAL back when I was only the game manager for wc3. Now it is no secret that Spades and Reign had a bad break. They had a falling out and there's no love between the 2. So NOW hearing "oh yeah btw, he streamcheated in Reign" really leaves a very nasty aftertaste. Not only because it seems like he's trying to bury Spades with their being some grudge in the background but also because of the obvious: why the fuck did Mirhi/Reign hide this all this time in the first place. As we might get a first hand demonstration of, if someone in WW is found cheating, the team will act on it and it won't be a slap on the wrist. To make matters worse he throws the results of MLG in question and won't even point out who was actually being coached during a game, so we have to suspect.. every Korean there?
Personally I see suspect behavior in the replays. Can I conclusively state Spades was cheating? No, not at this point. Not until we have pros review the games as they should've been in the first place. Regardless, I personally don't see a way Spades could recover from this regardless purely because of the damage to his reputation. People patting themselves on the back after all this can jump off a cliff for all I care, Spades was never given a fair chance which I think we should regret. At this point the truth won't matter much. Regardless WW will do it's part and do it properly. We'll investigate the matter fully and go from there.
The above user does not wish to receive hatemail in pm or on twitter, thanks for your consideration.
Gonna offer an alternative view on this one:
You gotta realize thats theres plenty of reasons not to contact a team manager, nor tournament admin. The admin I dont quite see how they're related to it. The team manager makes sense, but you are very VERY naive if you think theres only gonna be super honest and fair managers around who take on a 100% objective role and looks into the situation free of bias. Actually, thats almost certainly not going to happen.
First of all, theres likely going to be a good ground of trust built up between managers and their players. That alone is a bad start. You start your first post in this thread with "Have to say I'm disgusted by all this.". That is NOT a good start for an objective review. You continue to reluctantly agree to look into it in the same post. + Show Spoiler +
I'll look into it, but especially considering how late Spades often reacted to drops in game.. 5? Where luci went bio vs his mech, I certainly didn't see it while casting. I think it's highly inappropriate that so many people are jumping to conclusions.
On top of that, add the fact that there might be personal friendship involved between players/managers. At that point we're most definitely passing the point where the manager is NOT a suitable part in neither the investigation nor any kind of ruling. And we cant know the level of friendship between player/manager.
On top of that, just take a step back and look at the real world how cheating takes place. How many times hasnt there been a coach covering up for their players suspicious behaviour? I guarantee it happens a lot. Now I obviously dont think you had anything to do with this (supposing he is guilty in the first place), but to not acknowledge that theres incentive for team managers to let stuff like this just die out is once again a naive thing to do.
I dont have anything against you. But in conclusion I think you gotta acknowledge that you probably are not a very suitable person to contact. Not because you as a person, but because of your ties to the accused player. Theres a reason relatives/friends/co-workers/etc never are a part of a trial (except as witness) in real world crimes.
---- My own suggestion if I'd ever end up in a situation like the OP would be to contact pros straight away (thats what you normally do, contact experts in the field to get their opinion, and in this case the experts will have to be the pro). If there was a way to remove names from replays (is there?) that would be great too. You could then remove the names, write down all the points in the OP and say you think player X cheats, send replays to a pro who could look at them completely free of bias (because they dont know whos playing). If you got pros to agree on your points, you go ahead and spread it to the public in some way, with the pros opinion as a part of the post.
---- On a sidenote, if this was me doing all this, I'd most certainly make the post on a fresh account from a fresh computer too. Had the OP been any less well written its very easy to see how the witch hunt could have turned the other way.
I will say this one thing though, in addition to my recanting of the "replay analysis evidence" from a few pages ago.
If at the end of all this it seems that Spades is not guilty, we as a community had better go all mob in asking his team to keep him. If you're going to possibly fuck someone's career up as a mob, you'd better be ready to support it as well.
Completely unrelated, but honestly I think there might be some confirmation bias in the analysis of Spades' games. A lot of his weird moves ended up well, but a lot also ended up terribly for him. I wonder how an analysis would go if we were trying to find evidence for Spades being a noob and getting fucked for his decisions, rather than looking for evidence of Spades being a hacker.
I totally jumped the gun on this one and didn't think through how people would just take it as 100% evidence rather than as something that needs checking/alternative theories, which I posted as a disclaimer but honestly wasn't enough given the mob mentality.
PM'd Spades with an apology. Whether or not he hacks this particular bit of "evidence" is actually no evidence at all.
Your a good person Ethereal, and good job with talking to Dakota even without my input you would have realised it after him letting you know. just the action of you following it up even after you posted shows you are not bias
another thing to note is in the Metalpolis game, even in sc2 with 2 diffirent clients the apm/eapm calculator does not work, is it just a bug in my clients or is this the same for everyone? I don't want to start anything but that one replay could be corrupt.
I have looked over every replay, and had a detailed post on it here I have to say at least 90% of the actions the OP stated were not suspicious, and it made it look far worse then it really was, I don't think it was a good way to start this investigation, the feeling of being accused like this is pretty harsh on a human being, the least a person could do was try to create a post with only facts not a list of "I reckons"
Eyey, if it's all the same. I understand it's relevant, but it's easier on me if what I say on Twitter stays there. Saves me from waking up to people I've never heard of posting "boohoo crybaby" and the like. It's not that I feel like what I say is any less public there, but that's followers I don't need if you get what I'm saying. So consider that a personal request, thanks.
Now to discuss the mess at hand. Please note my main role with the westernwolves is as a commentator and the work I do managing and dealing with communities is purely secondary. In the end I only give the guy that signs the budget a recommendation. Sure so far they've always taken them, but in no way does me posting on Twitter; "I don't see how we can keep Spades on the team" mean "Spades isn't going to stay on the team". People much wiser than me sign off on the budget.
That said, I certainly meant what I posted there. Cheater or not, the only way Spades can come out of this with a reputation worth anything is if he proves conclusively he didn't cheat. Now the only thing harder than proving someone cheated is perhaps that someone didn't cheat. There is no way you can explain every action in a game afterwards and no way to prove you Didn't cheat. The best Spades could've hoped for was that people looked at this thread and the circumstancesand reached the conclusion there's not enough there to state he's cheating.
Now there's a few things that really troubled me throughout this. First off the blatantly bogus OP . IP match or not, I'm more convinced this is some cowards alt than anything. If you're going to make huge claims like this, put your own reputation at stake, you're certainly setting out to destroy someone else's. Taking in to account most the points made weren't proof of anything or just false, this went way further than it should have.
Though I shouldn't have to post this, here's how you Should handle a situation like this; if you find someone suspicious, contact 1 the admins 2 the team. They are going to be more suited than you to analyze this situation and are the ones that should if necessary act on this. Now in this case, they're one and the same, the WesternWolves. WW is a team with a wide array of players among several games, they're reputation is what sponsors bank on. Just like any team of this sort, they'll do whatever is needed to ensure their reputation is a legitimate one (obviously does not include creating bogus alts and accusing people). We would welcome that kind of feedback, investigate it to the fullest and probably thank you for it afterwards regardless of what is found!
A team will then generally contact uninvolved players and ask them to review the games. They will review these games in private, not on a stream to generate more sensation and leech the situation for every viewer they can get. If you want to know how far we got with this i we managed to contact 2 mouz players, but before anything could be reviewed, Spades was already getting hung out to dry. It is in no way TL or Reddits job to police players, we are quite capable of that as teams thank you very much.
What bothered me personally is what Mirhi posted and that I really can't get over. I have know Mirhi longer than almost anyone here and I couldn't believe what I was reading. I've known Frank from as far back as when he worked under me in CAL back when I was only the game manager for wc3. Now it is no secret that Spades and Reign had a bad break. They had a falling out and there's no love between the 2. So NOW hearing "oh yeah btw, he streamcheated in Reign" really leaves a very nasty aftertaste. Not only because it seems like he's trying to bury Spades with their being some grudge in the background but also because of the obvious: why the fuck did Mirhi/Reign hide this all this time in the first place. As we might get a first hand demonstration of, if someone in WW is found cheating, the team will act on it and it won't be a slap on the wrist. To make matters worse he throws the results of MLG in question and won't even point out who was actually being coached during a game, so we have to suspect.. every Korean there?
Personally I see suspect behavior in the replays. Can I conclusively state Spades was cheating? No, not at this point. Not until we have pros review the games as they should've been in the first place. Regardless, I personally don't see a way Spades could recover from this regardless purely because of the damage to his reputation. People patting themselves on the back after all this can jump off a cliff for all I care, Spades was never given a fair chance which I think we should regret. At this point the truth won't matter much. Regardless WW will do it's part and do it properly. We'll investigate the matter fully and go from there.
The above user does not wish to receive hatemail in pm or on twitter, thanks for your consideration.
I posted in response to your first post already, I won't repeat those points. I am dismayed that you repeat those points, though, and merely make them worse.
How could one even think that this should be kept under wraps and investigated by the team alone. It's in the team's interest that no player of theirs is even accused of cheating as that's probably the worst reputation hit a team can take. So there is massive incentive for the team to either hide the results or remove the player silently, so that he is free to play free agent or for another team.
That's exactly the reason why there are relevant bodies for other sports that deal specifically with cheating. As that's missing for SC2 at the moment (Savior was banned by Kespa, which is close to a supra-team body), then we need a place where members of the community come together and publicly discuss the matter. TL is the best place for this as pretty much every pro and manager is here.
TL forums is an idiotic place to discuss this.
To be honest I'm really disappointed with the way the mods have handled this. This is a serious allegation by an anonymous poster. The evidence to prove this claim is at best inconclusive, and for it to be debated and speculated in the public forum has already done irreparable damage to Spade's reputation and career.
Even if he were to somehow prove he didn't cheat in this showmatch or other matches -- which is impossible -- the damage is done. He will always be suspected of cheating.
Now, it still may be a possibility that Spade does hack. But still, it's absolutely appalling how easily it is for an anonymous poster, with no history or credibility (at least it hasn't been made public), to simply destroy the reputation of a player on this forum.
There is nothing preventing anyone from grabbing a large replay pack of any random Pro and highlighting every blind counter, stoppage in camera movement or lucky break, questioning the integrity of that player and causing a shit storm. Whether the claim valid or not will be irrelevant once their name is dragged through the mud.
TL should be embarassed right now. Pro players should be embarassed right now, by contributing to the speculation and fuelling an environment where they themselves and their peers can be so easily ostracized.
If TL wanted to treat this issue seriously, they would investigate it themselves, consult players privately, and if they deem it valid or newsworthy, post a lengthy article explaining why Spades will never participate in a TSL ever again.
On June 05 2012 18:18 EtherealDeath wrote: I will say this one thing though, in addition to my recanting of the "replay analysis evidence" from a few pages ago. + Show Spoiler +
If at the end of all this it seems that Spades is not guilty, we as a community had better go all mob in asking his team to keep him. If you're going to possibly fuck someone's career up as a mob, you'd better be ready to support it as well.
Completely unrelated, but honestly I think there might be some confirmation bias in the analysis of Spades' games. A lot of his weird moves ended up well, but a lot also ended up terribly for him. I wonder how an analysis would go if we were trying to find evidence for Spades being a noob and getting fucked for his decisions, rather than looking for evidence of Spades being a hacker.
The confirmation bias point is good. There are controls for that, though. Catz already compared the way he played to lan games. We should pull more games from lans, also of other people, and compare more. Too bad I'm too low level to do it with any value.
everyone wants to throw spades under the bus because its the easy thing to do but i feel like he still deserves a fair case.. i mean even fucking murderers have a defence team, why should this be any different? i formulated a few of my opinions based off of what i understood the most which is gameplay but i want to hear different views on the matter, u guys should start exploring different aspects/views so we can diversify our knowledge base
I totally jumped the gun on this one and didn't think through how people would just take it as 100% evidence rather than as something that needs checking/alternative theories, which I posted as a disclaimer but honestly wasn't enough given the mob mentality.
PM'd Spades with an apology. Whether or not he hacks this particular bit of "evidence" is actually no evidence at all.
Your a good person Ethereal, and good job with talking to Dakota even without my input you would have realised it after him letting you know. just the action of you following it up even after you posted shows you are not bias
another thing to note is in the Metalpolis game, even in sc2 with 2 diffirent clients the apm/eapm calculator does not work, is it just a bug in my clients or is this the same for everyone? I don't want to start anything but that one replay could be corrupt.
I have looked over every replay, and had a detailed post on it here I have to say at least 90% of the actions the OP stated were not suspicious, and it made it look far worse then it really was, I don't think it was a good way to start this investigation, the feeling of being accused like this is pretty harsh on a human being, the least a person could do was try to create a post with only facts not a list of "I reckons"
On June 05 2012 17:54 ImmortalZero617 wrote: I think people need to actually use a map hack before they should accuse anyone of map hacking, that way they actually know what they are talking about and what to look for when trying to ruin someones carrer.
I definitely agree with this. I think for most people today has been a crazy crash course for how map hacking works. But its clear from this thread that alot of people, some who are condemning, some who are defending, aren't quite sure how it actually works. I've gotten bits and pieces here and there but I almost wish that someone would post somewhere an outline of how it works. Although I do admit that this could be like posting online the ingredients for how to make a bomb or sarin gas. While clarifying things it could also help inform people about stuff they its better wasn't known publicly.
On June 05 2012 16:52 IcedBacon wrote: Spades sent out a worker but retrieved NO information from it.
Except that he did. One refinery, not zero or two, and two buildings, not zero, or one, or three, and no bunker.
See, this is my problem with these arguments. To say he "retrieved NO information from it" is simply 100% factually wrong.
Top level players just don't play like that. When it's the early game and there isn't much to do, sure lets just look at only the minimap for information when I could simply look down at the map that's already been revealed and gather more information? You come into this thread with apparently poor SC2 game sense and no TL posts and try so hard to defend Spades. What?
Can you tell me a reason, in the early game, why he would prefer to hack rather than look at information availeble to him? Because I can see no reason for him to do that, except the simple reason that it was a mistake. It's not like he didn't make a ton of mistakes in those games, lucky for him, so did Luci.
So proof that shows Spades is a hacker actually becomes proof that he isn't a hacker? Things don't really work that way. He never looks into the fog and somehow you twist that 180 degrees around?
Statements like your's really bug me in this thread. He does look into the fog. "He never looks into the fog [...]" just proves to me that you haven't even bothered watching the replays and that you are here just to throw stones.
Obviously we're just talking about different games/parts of the game lol
No we aren't. Your statement "He never looks into the fog [...]" is very clear.
Yes it should be clear that I don't literary never because only an idiot or someone trying really hard to nitpick would take it literally.
He actually never did though. And we're talking about a full screen of fog of war, obviously he might still see the edges at times otherwise that would just be even more ridiculous.
He actually did have a full screen of fog of war in the Entombed Valley game.. 1:19:30-1:20:10 http://www.twitch.tv/rootcatz/b/320407912 CatZ just explains for the first time that 'You can see in the fog of war if you rightclick' which seemed odd to me, as they never talked about that before.
Don't really have an opinion on this matter, but I saw you discussing this, and I remembered that moment. It really seemed wierd to me that the first time we see Spades looking in the fog of war, CatZ quickly explains that with 'oh he was rightclicking'
On June 05 2012 17:39 jaaaaakke wrote: Although I am not supporting the death threats in any shape or form, I can atleast rationalize why someone would send them. If he cheated/hacked me out of thousands of dollars, I would be pissed.
Regardless of if Spades hacked or not, my question to you is this:
You're telling me if I played a match between a fellow TLer for $1000, and I maphacked to win it, even though this match doesn't involve you in the slightest, you could honestly justify threatening to kill me?
That is the stupidest fucking logic I've heard.
Hm? No.
And again, I do not think death threats are ever right. All I am saying is that say I play a match and was robbed money, and the opponent used hacks to cheat me out of my winnings, I would be pissed.
That's all. I can understand the rationality of someone losing and sending the threats (even though they are wrong and committing a felony in the process).
Just the way you said it is almost as bad as the others who have stated things =P, just careful with your words man. Those people are wrong anyway, don't get mad over money, it's fake and not worth it's weight in gold.
Eyey, if it's all the same. I understand it's relevant, but it's easier on me if what I say on Twitter stays there. Saves me from waking up to people I've never heard of posting "boohoo crybaby" and the like. It's not that I feel like what I say is any less public there, but that's followers I don't need if you get what I'm saying. So consider that a personal request, thanks.
Now to discuss the mess at hand. Please note my main role with the westernwolves is as a commentator and the work I do managing and dealing with communities is purely secondary. In the end I only give the guy that signs the budget a recommendation. Sure so far they've always taken them, but in no way does me posting on Twitter; "I don't see how we can keep Spades on the team" mean "Spades isn't going to stay on the team". People much wiser than me sign off on the budget.
That said, I certainly meant what I posted there. Cheater or not, the only way Spades can come out of this with a reputation worth anything is if he proves conclusively he didn't cheat. Now the only thing harder than proving someone cheated is perhaps that someone didn't cheat. There is no way you can explain every action in a game afterwards and no way to prove you Didn't cheat. The best Spades could've hoped for was that people looked at this thread and the circumstancesand reached the conclusion there's not enough there to state he's cheating.
Now there's a few things that really troubled me throughout this. First off the blatantly bogus OP . IP match or not, I'm more convinced this is some cowards alt than anything. If you're going to make huge claims like this, put your own reputation at stake, you're certainly setting out to destroy someone else's. Taking in to account most the points made weren't proof of anything or just false, this went way further than it should have.
Though I shouldn't have to post this, here's how you Should handle a situation like this; if you find someone suspicious, contact 1 the admins 2 the team. They are going to be more suited than you to analyze this situation and are the ones that should if necessary act on this. Now in this case, they're one and the same, the WesternWolves. WW is a team with a wide array of players among several games, they're reputation is what sponsors bank on. Just like any team of this sort, they'll do whatever is needed to ensure their reputation is a legitimate one (obviously does not include creating bogus alts and accusing people). We would welcome that kind of feedback, investigate it to the fullest and probably thank you for it afterwards regardless of what is found!
A team will then generally contact uninvolved players and ask them to review the games. They will review these games in private, not on a stream to generate more sensation and leech the situation for every viewer they can get. If you want to know how far we got with this i we managed to contact 2 mouz players, but before anything could be reviewed, Spades was already getting hung out to dry. It is in no way TL or Reddits job to police players, we are quite capable of that as teams thank you very much.
What bothered me personally is what Mirhi posted and that I really can't get over. I have know Mirhi longer than almost anyone here and I couldn't believe what I was reading. I've known Frank from as far back as when he worked under me in CAL back when I was only the game manager for wc3. Now it is no secret that Spades and Reign had a bad break. They had a falling out and there's no love between the 2. So NOW hearing "oh yeah btw, he streamcheated in Reign" really leaves a very nasty aftertaste. Not only because it seems like he's trying to bury Spades with their being some grudge in the background but also because of the obvious: why the fuck did Mirhi/Reign hide this all this time in the first place. As we might get a first hand demonstration of, if someone in WW is found cheating, the team will act on it and it won't be a slap on the wrist. To make matters worse he throws the results of MLG in question and won't even point out who was actually being coached during a game, so we have to suspect.. every Korean there?
Personally I see suspect behavior in the replays. Can I conclusively state Spades was cheating? No, not at this point. Not until we have pros review the games as they should've been in the first place. Regardless, I personally don't see a way Spades could recover from this regardless purely because of the damage to his reputation. People patting themselves on the back after all this can jump off a cliff for all I care, Spades was never given a fair chance which I think we should regret. At this point the truth won't matter much. Regardless WW will do it's part and do it properly. We'll investigate the matter fully and go from there.
The above user does not wish to receive hatemail in pm or on twitter, thanks for your consideration.
I posted in response to your first post already, I won't repeat those points. I am dismayed that you repeat those points, though, and merely make them worse.
How could one even think that this should be kept under wraps and investigated by the team alone. It's in the team's interest that no player of theirs is even accused of cheating as that's probably the worst reputation hit a team can take. So there is massive incentive for the team to either hide the results or remove the player silently, so that he is free to play free agent or for another team.
That's exactly the reason why there are relevant bodies for other sports that deal specifically with cheating. As that's missing for SC2 at the moment (Savior was banned by Kespa, which is close to a supra-team body), then we need a place where members of the community come together and publicly discuss the matter. TL is the best place for this as pretty much every pro and manager is here.
To be honest I'm really disappointed with the way the mods have handled this. This is a serious allegation by an anonymous poster. The evidence to prove this claim is at best inconclusive, and for it to be debated and speculated in the public forum has already done irreparable damage to Spade's reputation and career.
Even if he were to somehow prove he didn't cheat in this showmatch or other matches -- which is impossible -- the damage is done. He will always be suspected of cheating.
Now, it still may be a possibility that Spade does hack. But still, it's absolutely appalling how easily it is for an anonymous poster, with no history or credibility (at least it hasn't been made public), to simply destroy the reputation of a player on this forum.
There is nothing preventing anyone from grabbing a large replay pack of any random Pro and highlighting every blind counter, stoppage in camera movement or lucky break, questioning the integrity of that player and causing a shit storm. Whether the claim valid or not will be irrelevant once their name is dragged through the mud.
TL should be embarassed right now. Pro players should be embarassed right now, by contributing to the speculation and fuelling an environment where they themselves and their peers can be so easily ostracized.
If TL wanted to treat this issue seriously, they would investigate it themselves, consult players privately, and if they deem it valid or newsworthy, post a lengthy article explaining why Spades will never participate in a TSL ever again.
Instead, the community happened.
Apparently you missed the fact that TL became the center of investigating hackers (GM hackers thread) and that's how this issue was raised. This was due to the fact that there was no better institution working on keeping hackers out of SC2 (Here's looking at you Blizz). Everyone agrees that there should be a better way of doing it, but there currently isn't a better way to do it.
Also, if the OP is a teammate or someone like that, he cannot contact other pros. Everyone will know who he is and the information will leak out. That can be incredibly damaging if people with money on the line decide to strike back in underhanded ways.
On June 05 2012 18:18 EtherealDeath wrote: I will say this one thing though, in addition to my recanting of the "replay analysis evidence" from a few pages ago. + Show Spoiler +
If at the end of all this it seems that Spades is not guilty, we as a community had better go all mob in asking his team to keep him. If you're going to possibly fuck someone's career up as a mob, you'd better be ready to support it as well.
Completely unrelated, but honestly I think there might be some confirmation bias in the analysis of Spades' games. A lot of his weird moves ended up well, but a lot also ended up terribly for him. I wonder how an analysis would go if we were trying to find evidence for Spades being a noob and getting fucked for his decisions, rather than looking for evidence of Spades being a hacker.
The confirmation bias point is good. There are controls for that, though. Catz already compared the way he played to lan games. We should pull more games from lans, also of other people, and compare more. Too bad I'm too low level to do it with any value.
LAN games is different. I play a lot different at LANs, half of it because I take less risks out of not wanting to lose in some dumbass way like a noob, and half due to nerves. You'll see me straight up 7 gate terrans with no robo quite often on ladder, but I almost never do that at a LAN. Do I lose to cloaked banshee followup to 1 rax FE on ladder? Yes, sometimes I can win with a proxied robo after the banshee hits my mineral line, but usually I lose when that happens if I 7 gate. Am I willing to take that risk in LANs? No, generally not unless it's against someone good, and even then I might try to play "safe".
So I think that method of trying to remvoe a confirmation bias is not necessarily the best or a good way to do so.
Eyey, if it's all the same. I understand it's relevant, but it's easier on me if what I say on Twitter stays there. Saves me from waking up to people I've never heard of posting "boohoo crybaby" and the like. It's not that I feel like what I say is any less public there, but that's followers I don't need if you get what I'm saying. So consider that a personal request, thanks.
Now to discuss the mess at hand. Please note my main role with the westernwolves is as a commentator and the work I do managing and dealing with communities is purely secondary. In the end I only give the guy that signs the budget a recommendation. Sure so far they've always taken them, but in no way does me posting on Twitter; "I don't see how we can keep Spades on the team" mean "Spades isn't going to stay on the team". People much wiser than me sign off on the budget.
That said, I certainly meant what I posted there. Cheater or not, the only way Spades can come out of this with a reputation worth anything is if he proves conclusively he didn't cheat. Now the only thing harder than proving someone cheated is perhaps that someone didn't cheat. There is no way you can explain every action in a game afterwards and no way to prove you Didn't cheat. The best Spades could've hoped for was that people looked at this thread and the circumstancesand reached the conclusion there's not enough there to state he's cheating.
Now there's a few things that really troubled me throughout this. First off the blatantly bogus OP . IP match or not, I'm more convinced this is some cowards alt than anything. If you're going to make huge claims like this, put your own reputation at stake, you're certainly setting out to destroy someone else's. Taking in to account most the points made weren't proof of anything or just false, this went way further than it should have.
Though I shouldn't have to post this, here's how you Should handle a situation like this; if you find someone suspicious, contact 1 the admins 2 the team. They are going to be more suited than you to analyze this situation and are the ones that should if necessary act on this. Now in this case, they're one and the same, the WesternWolves. WW is a team with a wide array of players among several games, they're reputation is what sponsors bank on. Just like any team of this sort, they'll do whatever is needed to ensure their reputation is a legitimate one (obviously does not include creating bogus alts and accusing people). We would welcome that kind of feedback, investigate it to the fullest and probably thank you for it afterwards regardless of what is found!
A team will then generally contact uninvolved players and ask them to review the games. They will review these games in private, not on a stream to generate more sensation and leech the situation for every viewer they can get. If you want to know how far we got with this i we managed to contact 2 mouz players, but before anything could be reviewed, Spades was already getting hung out to dry. It is in no way TL or Reddits job to police players, we are quite capable of that as teams thank you very much.
What bothered me personally is what Mirhi posted and that I really can't get over. I have know Mirhi longer than almost anyone here and I couldn't believe what I was reading. I've known Frank from as far back as when he worked under me in CAL back when I was only the game manager for wc3. Now it is no secret that Spades and Reign had a bad break. They had a falling out and there's no love between the 2. So NOW hearing "oh yeah btw, he streamcheated in Reign" really leaves a very nasty aftertaste. Not only because it seems like he's trying to bury Spades with their being some grudge in the background but also because of the obvious: why the fuck did Mirhi/Reign hide this all this time in the first place. As we might get a first hand demonstration of, if someone in WW is found cheating, the team will act on it and it won't be a slap on the wrist. To make matters worse he throws the results of MLG in question and won't even point out who was actually being coached during a game, so we have to suspect.. every Korean there?
Personally I see suspect behavior in the replays. Can I conclusively state Spades was cheating? No, not at this point. Not until we have pros review the games as they should've been in the first place. Regardless, I personally don't see a way Spades could recover from this regardless purely because of the damage to his reputation. People patting themselves on the back after all this can jump off a cliff for all I care, Spades was never given a fair chance which I think we should regret. At this point the truth won't matter much. Regardless WW will do it's part and do it properly. We'll investigate the matter fully and go from there.
The above user does not wish to receive hatemail in pm or on twitter, thanks for your consideration.
I agree with this post; this thread is completely inappropriate. Why have the mods not locked this crazy witch hunt thread down yet?? What good does it do for us to keep this going? I think most of us can agree there is no 100% conclusive evidence he hacked, and as such there's the possibility an innocent player has had his career ruined all because of a user who isn't putting HIS reputation on the line by accusing him anonymously. This thread should never have happened, I'm ashamed of this community for all these witch hunts that seem to be the norm now.
EPT
