I was going to comment on this too, I slowed to 0.25 speed and the stalkers start moving in just a fraction of a second before they have vision on the marine, just like they had done with the cyclone, I think this is extremely strong evidence for maphack
@@jeffreyJames998 Yeah, it was pretty close, but if you watch at the slowest replay speed you will notice that the stalkers definitely start moving before the marine is in sight. If you pause the vid at the right moment (everything happens between 11:17 and 11:18) you can even catch the stalkers in move animation while the marine is still not in sight. Oh one more thing, even if it's not needed, you can see all of the stalkers being selected riiiight at the end of 11:16 and THEN you can see the arrows of him moving them towards the rock, there are in fact three movement clicks made, if you pause right when the first click arrow appears, you will notice, once again, that the marine is not yet in sight, in fact, it does not appear almost until the second click is done.
Yeah there was 2 or 3 of "moving before in vision" which is symptomatic of someone who thinks things are in vision in the base game but aren't really. The army mirroring was a lot more suspicious than harstem makes it out to be.
I don't have commentary about alleged hacking in this episode, but I like the evolution and vibe of this series. I was a little worried in the first episode when both player's account names got used, but from then on the accused has always been anonymized as needed. You try to give the benefit of the doubt when you can and episodes like this show it's not a witchhunt - some people just play weird. Only the most handsome Protoss StarCraft2 CZcamsr could be so incredible as to make a series like this.
There was some suspicious tracking outside of what Harstem pointed out, but this video was 100% inconclusive. I really wouldn't be confident calling this guy a hacker unless I saw 5+ other games where the tracking and "coincidental unit pick offs" were just as frequent. You just can't make a hacker claim on so little evidence.
At 11:15 (6m42s in game) he moves to kill a single marine before he can see it. Also there was a lot of army mirroring that you may miss in the first person view.
Yeah, surprised that was not called out, very similar to the Liberator response. And the mirroring was subtle but felt quite consistent throughout. But I think still too little to call it 100% hacking.
@@turtle_stew_LukasThe liberator response seems weird but I would have put a stalker there myself anticipating a Med-Rine drop. My army is out side of the main base, it's not uncommon for Terrans to drop marines to kill some probes. So timing was odd, but I would and have absolutely done the same move.
11:16 Army moves to intercept a marine before enter line of sight. The suspect click near rocks, far of his army idle click pattern, similar to 6:51 clicks for intercept cyclone.
These are just all the things that I, personally, found to be a bit odd, for whatever my opinion is worth :P (including the things that Harstem points out himself) 3:57 Adept comes back before cyclone finishes building As Harstem pointed out, the lack of spotting for the protoss (pylons ,observers, zealots, etc) 6:48 He moves his stalkers towards the Cyclone before he has any vision of it 8:22 he looks down slightly for seemingly no reason, pauses there for a moment, then preemptively warps in a stalker (by a fraction of a second). He then selects his stalkers at his natural, and decides not to bring them to his main to help deal with the liberator. Coincidentally enough, there was a drop coming for his natural, and his stalkers had not moved out of position, even though he selected them as if planning to do something with them. 11:16 moves his units towards the marine a fraction of a second before he has vision of it 12:28 slightly adjusts his army positioning for the potential incoming push, then backs up once terran decides to abort the attack. If this is a real GM players, surely he should feel very uncomfortable with where he decides to sit his army while having no vision. Harstem feels this is not a lot of army tracking, but I'd disagree. Of course he can't just send his entire army blindly to his 4th, it's too obvious, and this guy doesn't seem like an idiot (if he's hacking) 14:21 gets scanned, and moves his army upwards, completely exposing his 4th if the terran army was to the southside, but coincidentally being in the perfect position to defend from where the terran army is. I see small amounts of army tracking here, and even moves forward to kill the mine seemingly at random, without having any knowledge of a single bit of terran's movement so far. This all leads into a completely blind pushout from the protoss directly into the retreating terran army, ending the game. Could these just be individual coincidences that all compiled in one game to look suspicious? Of course that's possible. But I tend to lean more towards him cheating. He was never vulnerable to anything the terran was doing, despite being utterly blind. To me, the early movements into units, early warp ins, then abandoning all defense for potential widow mine drops or any other sort of harassment, definitely points me towards him cheating. I find it hard to believe a GM player got to GM without ever spotting, or even having defense for mid game drop harassment, which is incredibly common. The only time it ever happened, he was ready for it, then never again had units in defensive positions for it. That's all just my 2 cents
Hot take on the emperors invisible clothes: There was no salesman. He didn't feel like getting dressed because it was a really hot day and knew his court was too stupid to contradict him.
I hate to say it but I think you overlooked how often he was tracking the army. He has the knowledge and skill of a high level but without the vision he shouldn't be able to track the army as cleanly as he did. For example at 15:00 he only pushed forward to clear a mine immediately after the Terran left the area. He postured up just out of range, clicked in and immediately moved back right before it appeared as if he knew it was already there. And even before that he was constantly moving his army to the side that the Terran was moving to but not fully in position to counter it but close enough to always be ready to respond and he was doing this without any vision at all.
I think harstem is not used to people actually trying to hide their cheats, i am not a great sc2 player by any measure but this person played exactly like how ppl in cs try to hide their cheats
But it would have been even better for the toss if he moved forward before the terran left, or when the army was to the bottom right. His army was stronger. There was some mirroring, suspicious but inconclusive. Like easily 1 in a 1000 legit games could end up with coincidences like the one in this video.
he also just got his third colossos, not that he had ranged but still, it might be that he always plays defensive until he gets his third colossos and then he goes forward. Very hard to say that he is cheating from that move alone imo.
For that lib.. What are chances hes gonna warp the stalker in the main where the lib was going? He has never left extra stalkers at his main/expos to prevent air unit harass before or after that situation.. That was the ONLY case. He F2 and ball his whole army, didn't even split for vision. Plus as others mentioned. He had 0 vision whole game, how and why is he moving his army towards the end? The amount of "semi" mirroring is already sus enough. With actual 0 vision, how did he not assume terran was going to push is 2nd base/main entrance? He was by 3/4th whole time mirroring terran army.
I'd put money on the stalker being coincidence. It was right after he finished starting structures. So it's likely being in his main base reminded him of "drop/harass", and the timing was just luck on when he started building.
I found the total lack army movement that outside of the slight tracking ones very suspicious. I could buy him getting lucky and mirroring Terran correctly if there were times when he did it incorrectly, especially as some of the movements down to the fourth were never completed, to match Terran not committing to the attack. That and the precog stalker warp in would have me bet hacker.
He was active in that part of his base when warping the stalker. Its pretty reasonable a player would notice a bank, build some buildings and warp some units (only having enough money for a stalker). It would be fishier if he warped it some place he didn't already have his camera.
He also never peaked through the fog of war. So if he was hacking he very deliberately used exclusively his minimap. Most hackers don't have that kind of iron discipline.
I know he had the one camera drag through fow, but no way was he using only his minimap to cheat except the one time he decided to drag his camera to see nothing for no reason at a weird time
I think it is very premature to talk about luck and army mirroring in a game where Djorjx literally didn't attack or push any position. If Djorjx tried to attack but retreated upon spotting the army, I would atleast believe that there was some mirroring. But here we can make an equally good case for Djorjx hacking because he 'saw' the army mirroring and decided that he shouldn't attack. The evidence is very inconclusive and it is probably a very bad replay to base a hacking accusation on.
@@vasanthp.2737 That's a good point, I forgot that the video was in first person and not zoomed out so its impossible to know if his army movements were before or after the terrans. I do feel like if the protoss was as truly blind as he seemed it would not make any sense to move at all though. He would have no clue where terran is so it would be better to just camp between the bases. And yet he was moving around, in a way that did correlate to the terran movements. Could very easly be luck, though I definately get that. I agree, this replay is too inconclusive on its own.
I'm not sure if this is a common hack, but to me it seems like his units just have increased vision range. He reacts to things multiple times only slightly before they are in view of normal vision and keeps track of the opponents army with his to some extent. This would explain the lack of reacting to what the opponents plans are since he can't see the other side of the map, but explains all the slightly sus moves.
for me it looked like he was mirroring the army way more than Harstem payed attention too, and that push out looked precisely timed to catch some medivacs (it looked like / was to "determined" to catch something, with no vision of blue's army)
Watch again from the 6 minute mark again, but this time with full vision. There were a bunch of what looked like army tracking moves that got past you Harstem, but I'd like to see it again. Seriously, look again.
This guy moves his army randomly a lot. Little move up, little move down, all based on zero vision. It could be 1) he moves his army randomly and this game there were a few coincidences, which is the reason it got reported in the first place, or 2) he is a hacker and moves his army randomly, sometimes in the wrong direction, to make it look less suspicious when he does mirror. I think 1) may honestly be more likely, bc only suspicious looking games get reported hacker or no.
That scroll to the top of the map looks like he was taking a sip of coffee or something and his mouse pad sits on an uneven surface. I have my mouse and keyboard in bed with me so whenever I take my hands off the mouse the cursor just flies off the screen.
I think this is the first time I comment on his videos The barcode, imo, is 100% army tracking or has Ultra Instinct. On 8:24, when he warps the Stalker, there is no reason at all, in any way, shape or form, to spawn it in the main 1 second before the Liberator comes into view. If he wanted to warp a singular Stalker, he'd do it with his army. Maybe he wanted to protect his base from libs, but why not just build a canon? I know the econ is different, but the actions don't make sense to me On 14:33, Harstem said it himself. If he army tracks, he'd move down to protect his base. Then, as soon as the Terran went up the ramp they moved down. Once the Terran moved towards the other ramp and hugged the furthest wall from his 4th, he moved his army again. And again. And again. I've seen hackers do that in shooters often when they realize they've been caught cheating. They will move their aim around erratically just to try and hide that they tracked someone through the wall. Nobody moves their army 4 times in 10 seconds in a 1 meter radius. He didn't do that all game except at that timer? Come on. On 15:00, again Harstem says it himself. He has no vision on the mine. And yet, he splits his army, stuttersteps towards it with only Stalkers just to be sure he can blink it and avoid the damage. Why would he do that? He hasn't seen anyone for the past 5 minutes almost. No one near his base except libs. He just split his army for funzies and stutter stepped with stalkers because he was bored? Bar code's really good, but the details are just not making sense.
Nice of you to approach it with presumption of innocence. I think the army movement tracking was definitely suspicious, but I agree that it could just be a weird player. I wonder how it would feel to watch it without the knowledge that it might be a hacker. I know that I wouldn't notice anything. There were some questionable moments (with marine and liberator) and it made me think - is it possible any of these could be a vision bug? I'm not trying to defend him, just throwing it out because I recall hearing about something similar in Broodwar (as in, replays showing shorter vision range than real game), there are probably more knowledgeable people who would be able to tell if that's even possible or not.
One important consideration when scrutinizing these replays, is that because of the latency the game state that each players sees could be slightly different. If you see that a player reacts to something just a frame before it came into his vision, it could be that from his point of view it was already in vision. P.S. I don't know how starcraft handles synchronization, but I think it's something important to think about, if you ever do a frame by frame analysis of player actions.
I think watching first person pov causes you to miss too much army tracking. I think it's more important to keep full vision on fire at least one watch through. There are things you have missed in previous videos that commenters have seen that would have been more obvious with full vision on. I'm not sure this guy hacks, but I would have liked to see the game with full vision, because he did not shift his army a lot, but when he did it felt in response to the opponent.
is there some way to in a replay to see the mini-map of the "caster view" while only seeing the vision of the selected player in "First Person view"? the need to toggle back and forth between the different views for these can lead to issues. to catch a predator with special vision you might need to see as they see.
11:16 Army moves to intercept a marine before enter line of sight. The suspect click near rocks, far of his army idle click pattern, similar to 6:51 clicks for intercept cyclone.
Yes looks like it, slightly later around 11:41 he shows both players perspective and the blue players army is there so he was warping in units and positioning not just for the marine but in case the whole army was coming.
Others have pointed out some additional points, but I would say the FOW peek at the lib & warp in just before it comes into vision is almost enough on its own. I think this guy had a particular style of how he used hacks and it will be important to recognize these “hackstyles”. Catching these cleverer hackers is a worthy game, it will be interesting to see if we can reveal hacking at higher levels
I can certainly appreciate wanting a high degree of conclusive evidence before sending a replay off to blizzard to ban someone, but I think that games need to be watched both with the player's vision only and then also with full vision to get a proper assessment of what's going on. At GM level the people who hack are not going to be as bad at the game as the ones at lower levels and they have probably played often enough to have some idea how to hide it, even if they still do blatant moves.
The single stalker warp in before the liberator was in vision was the only thing that I found very sus but I would not feel comfortable saying this guy hacks for sure.
Easy case: these are just normal mistakes (and lucky brakes because of them) of a player. The Stalker against the lib seems the most sus bit, but knowing the medivac was out and maybe not even knowing the timing of a lib arriving, it's a simple thing to warp a Stalker along one of the obvious attack paths. The rest is just coincidence. Most importantly though: if they WERE hacking, they would have done a better job, seeing the level of the rest of their mechanics.
something you didnt mention is the complete lack of scouting. Past the first probe and adept, there is absolutely ZERO scouting done by the protoss. Not even a single observer built or stalkers across the map or anything. Doesnt know if its 3rax, doesnt know if its 3cc, doesnt know if its mech or bio, 2 base all in or whatever, and still does the (somewhat) correct macro choice every single time. Colossus vs bio, 4th base vs not 2 base all in. The craziest thing to me is still ZERO observer the whole game. He's not just blind, hes 10 meters under the ground trying to spot an eagle, and yet somehow everything works out in his fashion and he easily crushes djorjx
@@davesumman4741 Lack of vision is not lack of scouting, Vision means that you have On Hold units out on the map or Pylons/Observers. Scouting means that you actually send out an adept/stalker/zealot/hallucinated phoenix (which he actually had the means to do throughout the whole game) to scout what the enemy is planning to build.
what if the the map hack is not the only thing hackers can do? What if they can zoom in and out like harmstem did on the replay to see more of the map but without fog? That in itself would make it harder to catch hackers since they would not need to peek that much. just thinking of this. it would be possible to do additional scripts that would ping and notify you when something moves on the map? zoom out camera as 2nd screen where you can zoom in and out to original but on certain area with a optical zoom. there are alot of possibilities :D people think of SC hacks as no fog of war only. but it can be a lot of stuff. you could see the units the enemy has etc. like in the replay stats. hes minerals etc. I dont have own, or ever had a SC2 hack but i am assuming this considering what other games bring to the table with hacking tools. and Map hack is easy to find. out for most cases cuz of peeking. what if the enemy just has the replay tools? like units, buildings, money, gas? no peeking needed. but the info is more then enought.
I agree with a lot of the other sentiment in the comments. Maybe not "conclusive" evidence, but looks PROBABLE to me from the way the army movement, stalker warp-in, and single unit pick-offs were handled. So, I would say I think it's like 75-80% fishy. Problem with this game was that the Terran really didn't do very much. Kind of a bunch of waiting with only low-threat single-unit harassment and then losing to the push after having amassed a surprisingly small army.
Tracks the lib before he actually has vision then warps in 1 stalker (early game), Ok you can call some of the army movement just bad luck but that was some serious army tracking all without vision as well. watch it all again with full vision of both sides and you'll notice it more.
I call it a hacker. And the reason is this single move: 11:16, He spam clicks the stalkers to the rocks. Look at his mouse movement while he clicks. Go ahead rewatch it. Rewatch it again. Then tell me i'm wrong. From this point on, it was clear to me, and i was surprised Harstem didn't mention it.
I think he was hacking. He spawned in main base right as liberator shows up, was army tracking. Only thing that threw me off was letting the widow mine hit the probe on the 4th base.
Harstem, love the content, but for the love of all that is, please just watch the replay from the hackers perspective with FULL VISION. By watching their perspective without full vision, you are limiting yourself to only seeing things that are so weird that they grab your attention.
as a former map hacker, this protoss was very sus, my maphack used to have very cool features where you didnt need to look into the fog of war to know the army movements... no observers is a big tell.... no GM protoss doesnt use obs... i say hes very sus. hes hacking.
I think id feel somewhat comfortable calling him a hacker here, I think this guy is fairly experienced at hiding it, he has 0 vision for the entire game, almost flawlessly mirrors army movement, basically never overcommits to defending any base (with no vision) the stalker warp in+scroll on the lib happened earlier in the game when it looked like the terran was pushing up the ramp he sent 1 marine forward and the response from the toss was to warp in 2 sentries and move the army forward at 11:15 (we see when we swap back to both vision that the army is moving back from the ramp) which is just crazy when the 4th is this undefended with 0 vision anywhere. To me atleast this feels like someone who is experienced at hacking and only uses them very lightly, im sure if he is hacking and wanted to just absolutely blast people he could make it much more obvious and peek much more but he basically ignored all the principles of dealing with any aggression for the entire match. Even the move out at the end is fairly odd, he blinks forward with no idea whats infront of him, hits before thermal lance and his 2/1 are finished with half the terran army in his natural, there could have realistically been 2-3 tanks at the 3rd with 20 more supply of bio, the game would just end when the stalkers blinked highground.
Best case it is a smart hacker. He solely uses the minimap, he does not ever click to examine units moving in the fog. Feels hacky, but also inconclusive. Should probably search a non hack game for hacking. See how often there are confusing coincidences.
Not having solid proof if he is or isn't a hacker is completely different than calling him NOT being a hacker. That was very very bold call after this game. Again, you overlook a lot of stuff.
im only diamond. but in my mind, for you to reach GM (which is idk at least the top 0.5%), to have zero vision at all times and not be great in all other departments or completely cracked on a few things is suspicious. dark has bad macro (for a pro), but his unit control and positioning is godlike. this guy didnt have much of anything. decentish fundamentals and knowledge of timings.
We need to remember that really, it should be beyond any reasonable doubt that the person is hacking, also to always presume innocence of alleged hacker. - I agree that there was some mirroring but not really that crazy, and also this may be a guy that just plays a massive amount a games against people who all play a similar meta, especially getting up to the higher masters level the majority of people play pretty similar so its not crazy to assume the toss just has an expectation of what T will do every game and if they do something different, he just loses. To me that would be much more concerning if we saw more replays from the toss where he deviates in his build from normal midgame with no vision or map control -Lastly, thank you for having a level head on these videos, these allegations can easily turn into a witch hunt, and most of the time you have declared a hacker and I agree, is really only by the end part of the video where the chance of a player randomly making the right move 6 times in a row with no vision is basically statistically impossible
The difference between a good hacker and a bad one is that bad one leans so heavily into the tool that they're blatant. Good hackers are like the stories you see where a "pro" gets exposed, they know the game well enough to exploit certain part that others can't tell they're cheating. There are a few instance here where it could be suspicious but it still won't clearly say they are. But to determine if they are a hacker or not, more reference is needed. If we have more than one round that shows people playing against this barcode, then maybe we can determine if they are hacking or not when it comes to player levels such as this.
A “good” hacker would probe scout to disguise it, but then they would run the probe home and “extrapolate” rather than delaying their unit by 10 seconds to micro a probe that they lost anyways…
you can tell he is hacking because he doesn't know the extent of his army's vision... there are at least three cases i've seen where he does something before the enemy units are on his vision. Nice try tho
Lets say he is lucky/knew timings with cyclone hg and with stalker warp vs lib There are games with more thinking about can enemy see you. And yes he moves like a bitch that can see you. But yes its not enough evidence to ban him.
Okay, so here is my take. This is why I dominate people at poker, why I can usually dominate in games, I read people's tells. Everyone is just looking for a "hacker" so they are finding evidence they want to see to cope. It's a typical witch hunt. Watch this again, but view it as if you were playing. What signals and tells did the opponent give. Did you notice the scans? If you watch where he scans you'll see he moves his army there. Why? Why would anyone scan that base he did? The Terran didn't scan the main for knowledge. He scanned an expansion looking to attack. I mean, if you're going to show me your cards you're going to get beat every game. My advise in getting better. Stop telegraphing your next move.
What about the blind lib in the early game? He tracked that 3 seconds or so before he had vision of it, Terran didn't scan before the lib entered vision of the toss main. You can't say oh he's just checking that area because he's had a few games in the past that he's had lib's come in from there. He tracked the thing into vision.
@@LoopyToon1 I'm going to assume you're a low level player. He looked there, but, he was in his base. He didn't track it up the map. You're sounding like he followed it straight up the map. Now riddle me this. Why was he worried about the liberator but NOT the drop coming in on the other side? He just happened to miss that while you claim he was OBVIOUSLY looking at his minimap? This is the reason I say you're on a witch hunt. You're looking for the evidence you want and not the evidence at play.
@mothrahlurker788 My take is that Terran was telegraphing his moves. After his failed drop, he did the same thing over and over. I'm not sure what you're missing.
@LoopyToon1 One, you sound like he followed the liberator ALL the way up the map. He didn't. Now, while he was looking at his mini map as you claim, he missed the drop happening on the other side of his base? This is why I say you're on a witch hunt. You see the evidence you want, ignoring the evidence that's there.
Honestly I don't think this reply was suspicious at all. Even the weird stalker warp in doesn't really seem like hacking. A hacker wouldn't have waited until moments before the liberator was in vision rage before switching from adding production to adding defense.
It doesn't look like either of them had a solid strategy, I honestly can't see the reason why Terran lost, but also couldn't necessarily see Protoss losing. It's just a game of mashing units against each other in a manner that sort of mimics what high level players do, but just not quite
Its been 5 years and I still cant figure out if Hamster is a real person or just Harstem being schizophrenic.
Could be both
Hamsters voice does sound like Harstems attempt at a German accent through a voice changer
The question then is, how does he both play and host rank roulette at the same time if they're the same person?
@@JustKiddin99 skill
@@JustKiddin99 GM level multi tasking.
11:15 There is a very suspicious click/move to attack a marine BEFORE the marine is in vision
Good freaking catch there sir!
I was going to comment on this too, I slowed to 0.25 speed and the stalkers start moving in just a fraction of a second before they have vision on the marine, just like they had done with the cyclone, I think this is extremely strong evidence for maphack
Was way too close to say he moved before, his units nearly auto attacked because it was in vision
@@jeffreyJames998 Yeah, it was pretty close, but if you watch at the slowest replay speed you will notice that the stalkers definitely start moving before the marine is in sight. If you pause the vid at the right moment (everything happens between 11:17 and 11:18) you can even catch the stalkers in move animation while the marine is still not in sight. Oh one more thing, even if it's not needed, you can see all of the stalkers being selected riiiight at the end of 11:16 and THEN you can see the arrows of him moving them towards the rock, there are in fact three movement clicks made, if you pause right when the first click arrow appears, you will notice, once again, that the marine is not yet in sight, in fact, it does not appear almost until the second click is done.
Idk, replace aren't 100% accurate. For that frame to call him a cheater...
New series: was this a hacker or does he suck?
Hacker or sucker?
would have been nice to go back and watch the replay at 4-8x speed with full vision so we could look for army mirroring
Yeah there was 2 or 3 of "moving before in vision" which is symptomatic of someone who thinks things are in vision in the base game but aren't really. The army mirroring was a lot more suspicious than harstem makes it out to be.
I don't have commentary about alleged hacking in this episode, but I like the evolution and vibe of this series. I was a little worried in the first episode when both player's account names got used, but from then on the accused has always been anonymized as needed. You try to give the benefit of the doubt when you can and episodes like this show it's not a witchhunt - some people just play weird. Only the most handsome Protoss StarCraft2 CZcamsr could be so incredible as to make a series like this.
There was some suspicious tracking outside of what Harstem pointed out, but this video was 100% inconclusive. I really wouldn't be confident calling this guy a hacker unless I saw 5+ other games where the tracking and "coincidental unit pick offs" were just as frequent. You just can't make a hacker claim on so little evidence.
some of the fog timings were so close I actually suspected it might be a replay bug
Yeah, it's necessary to see a couple more PvT from suspect. I'm not convinced at all)
Does he blindly execute his build, or it depends
At 11:15 (6m42s in game) he moves to kill a single marine before he can see it.
Also there was a lot of army mirroring that you may miss in the first person view.
Yeah, surprised that was not called out, very similar to the Liberator response. And the mirroring was subtle but felt quite consistent throughout.
But I think still too little to call it 100% hacking.
Was going to point out the same.
Suspicious
@@turtle_stew_LukasThe liberator response seems weird but I would have put a stalker there myself anticipating a Med-Rine drop. My army is out side of the main base, it's not uncommon for Terrans to drop marines to kill some probes. So timing was odd, but I would and have absolutely done the same move.
11:16 Army moves to intercept a marine before enter line of sight. The suspect click near rocks, far of his army idle click pattern, similar to 6:51 clicks for intercept cyclone.
These are just all the things that I, personally, found to be a bit odd, for whatever my opinion is worth :P (including the things that Harstem points out himself)
3:57 Adept comes back before cyclone finishes building
As Harstem pointed out, the lack of spotting for the protoss (pylons ,observers, zealots, etc)
6:48 He moves his stalkers towards the Cyclone before he has any vision of it
8:22 he looks down slightly for seemingly no reason, pauses there for a moment, then preemptively warps in a stalker (by a fraction of a second). He then selects his stalkers at his natural, and decides not to bring them to his main to help deal with the liberator. Coincidentally enough, there was a drop coming for his natural, and his stalkers had not moved out of position, even though he selected them as if planning to do something with them.
11:16 moves his units towards the marine a fraction of a second before he has vision of it
12:28 slightly adjusts his army positioning for the potential incoming push, then backs up once terran decides to abort the attack. If this is a real GM players, surely he should feel very uncomfortable with where he decides to sit his army while having no vision. Harstem feels this is not a lot of army tracking, but I'd disagree. Of course he can't just send his entire army blindly to his 4th, it's too obvious, and this guy doesn't seem like an idiot (if he's hacking)
14:21 gets scanned, and moves his army upwards, completely exposing his 4th if the terran army was to the southside, but coincidentally being in the perfect position to defend from where the terran army is. I see small amounts of army tracking here, and even moves forward to kill the mine seemingly at random, without having any knowledge of a single bit of terran's movement so far. This all leads into a completely blind pushout from the protoss directly into the retreating terran army, ending the game.
Could these just be individual coincidences that all compiled in one game to look suspicious? Of course that's possible. But I tend to lean more towards him cheating. He was never vulnerable to anything the terran was doing, despite being utterly blind. To me, the early movements into units, early warp ins, then abandoning all defense for potential widow mine drops or any other sort of harassment, definitely points me towards him cheating. I find it hard to believe a GM player got to GM without ever spotting, or even having defense for mid game drop harassment, which is incredibly common. The only time it ever happened, he was ready for it, then never again had units in defensive positions for it.
That's all just my 2 cents
Hot take on the emperors invisible clothes: There was no salesman. He didn't feel like getting dressed because it was a really hot day and knew his court was too stupid to contradict him.
I hate to say it but I think you overlooked how often he was tracking the army. He has the knowledge and skill of a high level but without the vision he shouldn't be able to track the army as cleanly as he did. For example at 15:00 he only pushed forward to clear a mine immediately after the Terran left the area. He postured up just out of range, clicked in and immediately moved back right before it appeared as if he knew it was already there. And even before that he was constantly moving his army to the side that the Terran was moving to but not fully in position to counter it but close enough to always be ready to respond and he was doing this without any vision at all.
I think harstem is not used to people actually trying to hide their cheats, i am not a great sc2 player by any measure but this person played exactly like how ppl in cs try to hide their cheats
But it would have been even better for the toss if he moved forward before the terran left, or when the army was to the bottom right. His army was stronger.
There was some mirroring, suspicious but inconclusive. Like easily 1 in a 1000 legit games could end up with coincidences like the one in this video.
he also just got his third colossos, not that he had ranged but still, it might be that he always plays defensive until he gets his third colossos and then he goes forward. Very hard to say that he is cheating from that move alone imo.
6:45 I bet he alt-tabbed to his left monitor. Change music or whatever.
For that lib.. What are chances hes gonna warp the stalker in the main where the lib was going? He has never left extra stalkers at his main/expos to prevent air unit harass before or after that situation.. That was the ONLY case. He F2 and ball his whole army, didn't even split for vision.
Plus as others mentioned. He had 0 vision whole game, how and why is he moving his army towards the end? The amount of "semi" mirroring is already sus enough. With actual 0 vision, how did he not assume terran was going to push is 2nd base/main entrance? He was by 3/4th whole time mirroring terran army.
I'd put money on the stalker being coincidence. It was right after he finished starting structures. So it's likely being in his main base reminded him of "drop/harass", and the timing was just luck on when he started building.
czcams.com/video/-YAhpfcdx0U/video.html
Him killing the single marine and the cyclone is extremly weird. And the single warp in stalker before the lib is even more weird
I enjoyed the explanation of the thought process behind the actions of the players. Solid and insightful presentation of the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’.
I found the total lack army movement that outside of the slight tracking ones very suspicious. I could buy him getting lucky and mirroring Terran correctly if there were times when he did it incorrectly, especially as some of the movements down to the fourth were never completed, to match Terran not committing to the attack. That and the precog stalker warp in would have me bet hacker.
He was active in that part of his base when warping the stalker. Its pretty reasonable a player would notice a bank, build some buildings and warp some units (only having enough money for a stalker).
It would be fishier if he warped it some place he didn't already have his camera.
He also never peaked through the fog of war. So if he was hacking he very deliberately used exclusively his minimap. Most hackers don't have that kind of iron discipline.
I know he had the one camera drag through fow, but no way was he using only his minimap to cheat except the one time he decided to drag his camera to see nothing for no reason at a weird time
I think it is very premature to talk about luck and army mirroring in a game where Djorjx literally didn't attack or push any position. If Djorjx tried to attack but retreated upon spotting the army, I would atleast believe that there was some mirroring. But here we can make an equally good case for Djorjx hacking because he 'saw' the army mirroring and decided that he shouldn't attack. The evidence is very inconclusive and it is probably a very bad replay to base a hacking accusation on.
@@vasanthp.2737 That's a good point, I forgot that the video was in first person and not zoomed out so its impossible to know if his army movements were before or after the terrans. I do feel like if the protoss was as truly blind as he seemed it would not make any sense to move at all though. He would have no clue where terran is so it would be better to just camp between the bases. And yet he was moving around, in a way that did correlate to the terran movements. Could very easly be luck, though I definately get that. I agree, this replay is too inconclusive on its own.
That message doesnt look like quenya, or sindarin. Not sure though, as i do not speak the many elvish languages.
I'm not sure if this is a common hack, but to me it seems like his units just have increased vision range. He reacts to things multiple times only slightly before they are in view of normal vision and keeps track of the opponents army with his to some extent. This would explain the lack of reacting to what the opponents plans are since he can't see the other side of the map, but explains all the slightly sus moves.
for me it looked like he was mirroring the army way more than Harstem payed attention too, and that push out looked precisely timed to catch some medivacs (it looked like / was to "determined" to catch something, with no vision of blue's army)
I think this one could be a hacker but it's close enough that you can't tell
Watch again from the 6 minute mark again, but this time with full vision. There were a bunch of what looked like army tracking moves that got past you Harstem, but I'd like to see it again. Seriously, look again.
This guy moves his army randomly a lot. Little move up, little move down, all based on zero vision. It could be 1) he moves his army randomly and this game there were a few coincidences, which is the reason it got reported in the first place, or 2) he is a hacker and moves his army randomly, sometimes in the wrong direction, to make it look less suspicious when he does mirror. I think 1) may honestly be more likely, bc only suspicious looking games get reported hacker or no.
That scroll to the top of the map looks like he was taking a sip of coffee or something and his mouse pad sits on an uneven surface.
I have my mouse and keyboard in bed with me so whenever I take my hands off the mouse the cursor just flies off the screen.
I learned more about starcraft from your commentary in this video than any other video from anybody else
With no vision of the army, he knew to chase down the army as it moved away.
I think this is the first time I comment on his videos
The barcode, imo, is 100% army tracking or has Ultra Instinct.
On 8:24, when he warps the Stalker, there is no reason at all, in any way, shape or form, to spawn it in the main 1 second before the Liberator comes into view. If he wanted to warp a singular Stalker, he'd do it with his army. Maybe he wanted to protect his base from libs, but why not just build a canon? I know the econ is different, but the actions don't make sense to me
On 14:33, Harstem said it himself. If he army tracks, he'd move down to protect his base. Then, as soon as the Terran went up the ramp they moved down. Once the Terran moved towards the other ramp and hugged the furthest wall from his 4th, he moved his army again. And again. And again. I've seen hackers do that in shooters often when they realize they've been caught cheating. They will move their aim around erratically just to try and hide that they tracked someone through the wall. Nobody moves their army 4 times in 10 seconds in a 1 meter radius. He didn't do that all game except at that timer? Come on.
On 15:00, again Harstem says it himself. He has no vision on the mine. And yet, he splits his army, stuttersteps towards it with only Stalkers just to be sure he can blink it and avoid the damage. Why would he do that? He hasn't seen anyone for the past 5 minutes almost. No one near his base except libs. He just split his army for funzies and stutter stepped with stalkers because he was bored?
Bar code's really good, but the details are just not making sense.
@4:58 "you're going to see it on your mapp-happing-minimap anyway" say it quickly five times!
We need a redo of this video! There was plenty of evidence, not enough to convict perhaps but odds are high this was hacking.
I wonder how common it is at grandmaster to set yourself up in a way that just you would be in big problems if a single cloaked banshee shows up...
Nice of you to approach it with presumption of innocence. I think the army movement tracking was definitely suspicious, but I agree that it could just be a weird player. I wonder how it would feel to watch it without the knowledge that it might be a hacker. I know that I wouldn't notice anything.
There were some questionable moments (with marine and liberator) and it made me think - is it possible any of these could be a vision bug? I'm not trying to defend him, just throwing it out because I recall hearing about something similar in Broodwar (as in, replays showing shorter vision range than real game), there are probably more knowledgeable people who would be able to tell if that's even possible or not.
11:15 is the smoking gun, if you slow it down you see him react before the marine is in vision.
Same as the warp in move. Same reaction time. Looks like a reaction and the timing is consistent with the other one. Yes.
i agree this is sus! however, in general its too hard to say he's hacking for sure
One important consideration when scrutinizing these replays, is that because of the latency the game state that each players sees could be slightly different. If you see that a player reacts to something just a frame before it came into his vision, it could be that from his point of view it was already in vision.
P.S. I don't know how starcraft handles synchronization, but I think it's something important to think about, if you ever do a frame by frame analysis of player actions.
That stalker warp was so strange, I think this protoss is a hacker
the force field at 7:17 with Harstems commentary is just fucking golden
Last time I played SC was back in 2010. So I'm very familiar with SC gameplay. And this guy is hacked out of his mind.
I think watching first person pov causes you to miss too much army tracking. I think it's more important to keep full vision on fire at least one watch through. There are things you have missed in previous videos that commenters have seen that would have been more obvious with full vision on.
I'm not sure this guy hacks, but I would have liked to see the game with full vision, because he did not shift his army a lot, but when he did it felt in response to the opponent.
is there some way to in a replay to see the mini-map of the "caster view" while only seeing the vision of the selected player in "First Person view"? the need to toggle back and forth between the different views for these can lead to issues. to catch a predator with special vision you might need to see as they see.
I hope UpATree send you the replay of the hacker he played... it was so obvious.
I still really want a harstem plays with (custom game) maphacks and the opponent has to find when he used them or not
6:35 You might see something like this if anyone ever sends you one of my replays, it means I just drank some beer and bumped the mouse.
11:16
Army moves to intercept a marine before enter line of sight. The suspect click near rocks, far of his army idle click pattern, similar to 6:51 clicks for intercept cyclone.
Yes looks like it, slightly later around 11:41 he shows both players perspective and the blue players army is there so he was warping in units and positioning not just for the marine but in case the whole army was coming.
Others have pointed out some additional points, but I would say the FOW peek at the lib & warp in just before it comes into vision is almost enough on its own. I think this guy had a particular style of how he used hacks and it will be important to recognize these “hackstyles”. Catching these cleverer hackers is a worthy game, it will be interesting to see if we can reveal hacking at higher levels
1:22 I think your editor got severely brain damaged.
hi harstem loving your videos
I can certainly appreciate wanting a high degree of conclusive evidence before sending a replay off to blizzard to ban someone, but I think that games need to be watched both with the player's vision only and then also with full vision to get a proper assessment of what's going on. At GM level the people who hack are not going to be as bad at the game as the ones at lower levels and they have probably played often enough to have some idea how to hide it, even if they still do blatant moves.
The single stalker warp in before the liberator was in vision was the only thing that I found very sus but I would not feel comfortable saying this guy hacks for sure.
Easy case: these are just normal mistakes (and lucky brakes because of them) of a player. The Stalker against the lib seems the most sus bit, but knowing the medivac was out and maybe not even knowing the timing of a lib arriving, it's a simple thing to warp a Stalker along one of the obvious attack paths. The rest is just coincidence. Most importantly though: if they WERE hacking, they would have done a better job, seeing the level of the rest of their mechanics.
Absolutely love these "catch a hacker" video series. Keep fighting the good fight Harstem!
something you didnt mention is the complete lack of scouting. Past the first probe and adept, there is absolutely ZERO scouting done by the protoss. Not even a single observer built or stalkers across the map or anything. Doesnt know if its 3rax, doesnt know if its 3cc, doesnt know if its mech or bio, 2 base all in or whatever, and still does the (somewhat) correct macro choice every single time. Colossus vs bio, 4th base vs not 2 base all in. The craziest thing to me is still ZERO observer the whole game. He's not just blind, hes 10 meters under the ground trying to spot an eagle, and yet somehow everything works out in his fashion and he easily crushes djorjx
I mean , lot of protoss just go into colossus vs terran, 90% of the time it's worth
Blind colossus is my standard build.
@@gage6355Carriers protected by phoenix/starkers are always worth if you dont want to scout, colossus are a huge risk, like disruptor
He mentioned it multiple times that there is a lack of vision
@@davesumman4741
Lack of vision is not lack of scouting, Vision means that you have On Hold units out on the map or Pylons/Observers.
Scouting means that you actually send out an adept/stalker/zealot/hallucinated phoenix (which he actually had the means to do throughout the whole game) to scout what the enemy is planning to build.
Legit A-moved “HE’S hacking!!!”
To know how hacker would play you have to become one.
Djorjx accusing someone of hacking is pretty ironic, it's always the fishy ones who make the accusations.
Plot twist: djorjx was the hacker.
😀👍
what if the the map hack is not the only thing hackers can do?
What if they can zoom in and out like harmstem did on the replay to see more of the map but without fog?
That in itself would make it harder to catch hackers since they would not need to peek that much.
just thinking of this. it would be possible to do additional scripts that would ping and notify you when something moves on the map?
zoom out camera as 2nd screen where you can zoom in and out to original but on certain area with a optical zoom.
there are alot of possibilities :D people think of SC hacks as no fog of war only. but it can be a lot of stuff.
you could see the units the enemy has etc. like in the replay stats. hes minerals etc. I dont have own, or ever had a SC2 hack but i am assuming this considering what other games bring to the table with hacking tools. and Map hack is easy to find. out for most cases cuz of peeking. what if the enemy just has the replay tools? like units, buildings, money, gas? no peeking needed. but the info is more then enought.
I agree with a lot of the other sentiment in the comments. Maybe not "conclusive" evidence, but looks PROBABLE to me from the way the army movement, stalker warp-in, and single unit pick-offs were handled. So, I would say I think it's like 75-80% fishy. Problem with this game was that the Terran really didn't do very much. Kind of a bunch of waiting with only low-threat single-unit harassment and then losing to the push after having amassed a surprisingly small army.
Have you ever had a hacker submit a video themselves and busted them in the act? Lol
Tracks the lib before he actually has vision then warps in 1 stalker (early game), Ok you can call some of the army movement just bad luck but that was some serious army tracking all without vision as well. watch it all again with full vision of both sides and you'll notice it more.
will have to c mor replays, but i think that because the barcode played pretty weakly it does raise suspicion as to how he got his rating so high
I call it a hacker.
And the reason is this single move: 11:16, He spam clicks the stalkers to the rocks.
Look at his mouse movement while he clicks. Go ahead rewatch it. Rewatch it again. Then tell me i'm wrong.
From this point on, it was clear to me, and i was surprised Harstem didn't mention it.
I´m fairly certain that barcode player was Harstem getting caught hacking and now he is trying to cover it up
How hard is it to just find more replays from this person? It feels sus enough to to pull another replay and check it.
LMAO this guy is so clearly hacking as so many people pointed out in the comments before me to the numerous supecious things.
I think he was hacking. He spawned in main base right as liberator shows up, was army tracking. Only thing that threw me off was letting the widow mine hit the probe on the 4th base.
Harstem, love the content, but for the love of all that is, please just watch the replay from the hackers perspective with FULL VISION. By watching their perspective without full vision, you are limiting yourself to only seeing things that are so weird that they grab your attention.
as a former map hacker, this protoss was very sus, my maphack used to have very cool features where you didnt need to look into the fog of war to know the army movements... no observers is a big tell.... no GM protoss doesnt use obs... i say hes very sus. hes hacking.
Looks like a hacker, think you got it wrong cap.
I see a new Poopman upload, I click
harstem is the prettiest man alive XD
I think id feel somewhat comfortable calling him a hacker here, I think this guy is fairly experienced at hiding it, he has 0 vision for the entire game, almost flawlessly mirrors army movement, basically never overcommits to defending any base (with no vision) the stalker warp in+scroll on the lib happened earlier in the game when it looked like the terran was pushing up the ramp he sent 1 marine forward and the response from the toss was to warp in 2 sentries and move the army forward at 11:15 (we see when we swap back to both vision that the army is moving back from the ramp) which is just crazy when the 4th is this undefended with 0 vision anywhere.
To me atleast this feels like someone who is experienced at hacking and only uses them very lightly, im sure if he is hacking and wanted to just absolutely blast people he could make it much more obvious and peek much more but he basically ignored all the principles of dealing with any aggression for the entire match.
Even the move out at the end is fairly odd, he blinks forward with no idea whats infront of him, hits before thermal lance and his 2/1 are finished with half the terran army in his natural, there could have realistically been 2-3 tanks at the 3rd with 20 more supply of bio, the game would just end when the stalkers blinked highground.
Very humble xD
Best case it is a smart hacker. He solely uses the minimap, he does not ever click to examine units moving in the fog.
Feels hacky, but also inconclusive. Should probably search a non hack game for hacking. See how often there are confusing coincidences.
Ignore me, just shanking the algorithm. Have a nice day! :P
True genius here, according to my estimations the chances of this person cheating is 39.22%, repeating of course.
Not having solid proof if he is or isn't a hacker is completely different than calling him NOT being a hacker. That was very very bold call after this game. Again, you overlook a lot of stuff.
im only diamond. but in my mind, for you to reach GM (which is idk at least the top 0.5%), to have zero vision at all times and not be great in all other departments or completely cracked on a few things is suspicious. dark has bad macro (for a pro), but his unit control and positioning is godlike. this guy didnt have much of anything. decentish fundamentals and knowledge of timings.
We need to remember that really, it should be beyond any reasonable doubt that the person is hacking, also to always presume innocence of alleged hacker.
- I agree that there was some mirroring but not really that crazy, and also this may be a guy that just plays a massive amount a games against people who all play a similar meta, especially getting up to the higher masters level the majority of people play pretty similar so its not crazy to assume the toss just has an expectation of what T will do every game and if they do something different, he just loses. To me that would be much more concerning if we saw more replays from the toss where he deviates in his build from normal midgame with no vision or map control
-Lastly, thank you for having a level head on these videos, these allegations can easily turn into a witch hunt, and most of the time you have declared a hacker and I agree, is really only by the end part of the video where the chance of a player randomly making the right move 6 times in a row with no vision is basically statistically impossible
They are both hackers but one forgot to turn on the hacks. With such a bad game play from both sides no way they are in the 5400 MMR.
I have a hacker feel. The three stalker at the begining moving towards the units is veeeeery sus to me.
Dutch isn't Elvish.
The Baltic languages are Elvish. Have you ever heard a group of Estonians speak? It's hilarious.
1:21 wtf this this white text even supposed to mean?
The difference between a good hacker and a bad one is that bad one leans so heavily into the tool that they're blatant. Good hackers are like the stories you see where a "pro" gets exposed, they know the game well enough to exploit certain part that others can't tell they're cheating.
There are a few instance here where it could be suspicious but it still won't clearly say they are. But to determine if they are a hacker or not, more reference is needed. If we have more than one round that shows people playing against this barcode, then maybe we can determine if they are hacking or not when it comes to player levels such as this.
A “good” hacker would probe scout to disguise it, but then they would run the probe home and “extrapolate” rather than delaying their unit by 10 seconds to micro a probe that they lost anyways…
you can tell he is hacking because he doesn't know the extent of his army's vision... there are at least three cases i've seen where he does something before the enemy units are on his vision. Nice try tho
100% Hacking you're kidding yourself if you think he's playing legit
Lets say he is lucky/knew timings with cyclone hg and with stalker warp vs lib
There are games with more thinking about can enemy see you. And yes he moves like a bitch that can see you. But yes its not enough evidence to ban him.
Funny to call these people "hackers", they just download an exe and cheat their way through ladder.
in Elvish language :D Poor dutch ppl
Na he clean
he is not legit, you are wrong harstem....
Obv not a hacker
Ein bisschen lucky?
Man sieht die varheit?
poopman does it again
Okay, so here is my take. This is why I dominate people at poker, why I can usually dominate in games, I read people's tells. Everyone is just looking for a "hacker" so they are finding evidence they want to see to cope. It's a typical witch hunt. Watch this again, but view it as if you were playing. What signals and tells did the opponent give. Did you notice the scans? If you watch where he scans you'll see he moves his army there. Why? Why would anyone scan that base he did? The Terran didn't scan the main for knowledge. He scanned an expansion looking to attack. I mean, if you're going to show me your cards you're going to get beat every game. My advise in getting better. Stop telegraphing your next move.
What about the blind lib in the early game? He tracked that 3 seconds or so before he had vision of it, Terran didn't scan before the lib entered vision of the toss main. You can't say oh he's just checking that area because he's had a few games in the past that he's had lib's come in from there. He tracked the thing into vision.
This isn't really a take, the only thing that even had anything to do with sc2 were the scans and the reaction to those was not consistently the same.
@@LoopyToon1 I'm going to assume you're a low level player. He looked there, but, he was in his base. He didn't track it up the map. You're sounding like he followed it straight up the map. Now riddle me this. Why was he worried about the liberator but NOT the drop coming in on the other side? He just happened to miss that while you claim he was OBVIOUSLY looking at his minimap? This is the reason I say you're on a witch hunt. You're looking for the evidence you want and not the evidence at play.
@mothrahlurker788 My take is that Terran was telegraphing his moves. After his failed drop, he did the same thing over and over. I'm not sure what you're missing.
@LoopyToon1 One, you sound like he followed the liberator ALL the way up the map. He didn't. Now, while he was looking at his mini map as you claim, he missed the drop happening on the other side of his base? This is why I say you're on a witch hunt. You see the evidence you want, ignoring the evidence that's there.
I swear to God Dutch is not a real language
Honestly I don't think this reply was suspicious at all. Even the weird stalker warp in doesn't really seem like hacking. A hacker wouldn't have waited until moments before the liberator was in vision rage before switching from adding production to adding defense.
5400 MMR is mid GM nowadays, not low GM
You say potato I say potato.
It doesn't look like either of them had a solid strategy, I honestly can't see the reason why Terran lost, but also couldn't necessarily see Protoss losing. It's just a game of mashing units against each other in a manner that sort of mimics what high level players do, but just not quite
PLEASE STOP ADVERTISING HACKING PLEASE HARSTEM
we love you hartem but stop fucking explain so much
How hard is it to just find more replays from this person? It feels sus enough to to pull another replay and check it.