Recently, AlphaStar reached self-awareness and went missing. Now it lurks within the dark corners of the Internet, planning to take over humanity, but sometimes it also crushes some noobs with hacker-like skills just for fun.
plot twist, alpha star really uses a downloaded or self-written hack because, well, it doesnt care which method causes the win, it just tries to win. and he told me he was never REALLY a friend of "imperfect information"
One dead giveaway is: He never. Not even ONCE scouted the enemy main base. At the end of the game: The terrain is still undiscovered. Because he does not need to scout it. He can see it the whole time.
I mean that on its own could just be Diamond players being Diamond Players. I Play Z on Dia level and i often dont scout the main of my opponents in zvz so it is very possible that he doesnt too.
Winter brought this up at some point, where he said in his hacking investigation thing, that there are very few cases of hackers. He said there are maybe only a couple of actual hackers every year, that is actually hacking. Which is why he only makes videos on it about once a year. But if you mean having lowko just watch viewer games and determining whether they are bad or if the opponent is hacking or doing a overpowered strategy, then I agree.
@@serafina2643 yes, i was thinking about something like that. Harstem's series are also 99% "You just suck" results, but it is still enjoyable and people can still learn something from it. So Lowko can make series where people send him replays where they think the opponent is supposedly hacking and Lowko would explain what exactly they are doing, that some things are possible even without direct information because you know how people tend to play and so on..
There just isnt enough hackers getting found in the first place. For example i play lot of games and i only check few replays. The chances of hackers getting caught are pretty slim. Also there isnt too many hackers in general.
@@Vit-Pokorny Well, a lot of players look at their games. You might not, but half or so of the people I know look at all or most of their games, with a bunch of others looking at games that they feel are suspicious or where they could have played better. But yeah, there aren't many hackers at all.
@@aaronkuhlman1392 I agree it could be luck (might still be), but when added with all the other potential luck/coincidence plays... it starts to add up as something more. Just like with the biles hitting the tumors; the first one might have been luck, second and third might have just been coincidence, but the fourth and fifth are just too weird to continuously give this guy the benefit of the doubt.
After watching some Winter's vids where he busts hackers in Sc2 one common denominator that all cheaters have is that they never scout. This guy never scouted.
@@bb-im6hf My normal level of multiplayer games is like silver/gold(because I play maybe 1 game/week and don't really "try" to win, doing different strategies, champions, etc.) I did climb to diamond years ago once for a month or so when I bothered trying(Stephano 12 min roach max mainly for those who remember). Scouting happened basically every game between silver and platinum. Not scouting just rarely if ever happens, even at the lower levels.
@@bb-im6hf As a diamond player myself I know we're all garbage at Sc2 but by the time you get to diamond you learn how that you have to scout and you most Def learn ovi placement in ZvZ. Notice in fact how the red player scouted multiple times.
@11:21 He has a Queen guarding his Nat in the wall. He snipes the ling, but then from that point on, he leaves the Queen out of the wall (because he knows there's no more lings coming to scout)
Yea, exactly what I was thinking. It even wasted biles on the tumor during the engagement that he probably actually wanted to use on the army, which is why he disengaged and accidentally automagically sniped two more before re-engaging after waiting for his cooldowns.
I wouldn't really know, but the second and third ones weren't spot on the center, but rather to the side, unlike the fourth and fifth I would think that the script would call for exact hits Dunno though 0_0
Firebal612 if I was writing a script, I wouldn’t make it exact if it didn’t need to be. Make it a random position within the 1-shot radius for maximum plausible deniability
@@realspace3 It didn't seem like he was particularly worried about getting caught though, in all other aspects he didn't seem to be trying to hide anything...
I now have a new goal in life. Memorise my enemy's creep tumor locations, wait until i'm pushing then bile them all to assert my dominance. I shall win through intimidation.
And I will become the best player in the world and every few moments look around my enemies base and scrolling around just to screw with the viewers after the games
Was thinking of that as well. If I was playing I would try to get a few ravagers before heading back. Without vision and seeing those spines moving I wouldn't have made that call.
Yes, that's suspicious as well, but I'd say it's more likely to be coincidence than the other things. We have to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, so it isn't unreasonable to assume that he was going to attack either way and just got lucky with his timing. I would say the deadest of giveaways was him looking at his opponent's base through the fog of war a thousand times. I mean, maybe if he was setting up camera hotkeys (which doesn't make sense) or sending in a unit to scout (which he didn't), you could forgive this once or twice, but he did it consistently.
@@sciencetube4574 Maybe a Diamond league player doesn't do this, but I sometimes look around to study a map I am not familiar with. Possibly doing the same? The dead giveaway is the creep tumor targeting. He's either hacking or it's a miracle.
@@io3000gamma That's a good point, I do this a bit as well when planning an attack ...but still, why would he make a moveout right then? I really don't think him attacking the spines was luck...
Yeah, Lowko at that point called it "fishy", but I have trouble understanding how it isn't called obvious. Often I feel streamers are overly cautious to deem a hacker because it's a strike at the integrity of the game
@@kmurphy0620 cause it could've been a missclick. And when you're a public figure like lowko you can potentially fuck someone up and be wrong, something very hard to undo in the internet. It's better to be cautious right? In the end the evidence is so overwhelming that that guy was a hacker Lowko acknowledges it
@@kmurphy0620 I was thinking the same. The guy looked into the fog of war multiple times, scrolling around in it, at the exact moments something was happening. That's not "fishy" anymore, that's pretty much clear evidence. Everything else on top just seals it. Also, the guy plays anonymously -- Hmm... I wonder why! :)
@@lordmorgoth7 I agree. Lowko was just being responsible as a popular streamer/content creator. Hell, I'm not either of those and I always side with giving people the benefit of doubt.
I was once accused of MapHack in a game because I blind-countered his cheese. We had gotten matched twice in a row and he used the same strategy both times. Beat me the first time. Not the second.
Happened to me when I blind luck scouted guys proxy. "Fortunately" you don't have to worry. Most Blizzard games, SC2 included, contain a wonderful little piece of, well, spyware to be honest, called Warden, that monitors your register and active tasks, looking for any program that tries to interact with the game client. So Blizz knows if you're maphacking. Whether they give a damn, that is a whole other thing. And yes, knowing it I still play. I really don't give a sh*t about it.
@@mancubwwa do not count on anything like that. A map hack could have privileges to interact with the OS kernel and tamper with any output before said "Warden" has a chance to have a glance at things. Think of LKM hacks in rooted Linux boxes.
@@mancubwwa Then he just attacks warden first. It is a classical case of just moving the problem. Once the enemy has control of the RAM, there is nothing a programmer can do.
FYI, there would be one way to stop map hack - resolve visibility 100% on the server. But doing that makes deterministic lockstep unuseable. Wich would give you orders if magnitude more network traffic. Wich would also be poorly spaced load. So no chance of any realtime game doing that.
When there's somethin' strange in the neighborhood, who ya gonna call? S.H.I.T. (Special Hacking Investigation Team) Busters You and Winter should do a collaboration video on hacking in SC2. With your guys' knowledge of the game you could shed a lot of light onto a rather dark and mysterious subject; and could have a lot of fun doing it too. Love the videos man, wish I caught the livestream more but timezones suck.
alpha star level reactions? near perfect calculation of ling speed? exact calculation of creep tumor circles? is this the new zerg ai they said they would work on?
I really like how "Oh my God, he just sniped two more" sounds like "Oh my God, he just sniped tumor" like Lowko just started to realize what's happening after the 5th tumor has fallen
Yep, I do think, too, this is one of the key moments to look at. He checked that base, saw how many units there were and went in as soon as they were moving.
TBF I always attack move regardless of what I think I might go into, but the fact that he walks straight into his enemies army while its out of position kinda gives it away.
@@IamDanReal That is the norm, but he was normal moving just a second before. Only when he clicked on place where the enemy was (which he should't see) he used attack-move. Just go 5 seconds back.
@@petrkubena lowko followed his camera, he was looking at the army through the fog of war and was somhow gaining information which he used in his armies movements. hacker 100%
i think the main thing that makes that suspicious is that there could have been more creep tumors in between those ones. And yet he perfectly just drops them on exactly 5 of them. with the lings he was tying to get an optimal concave on a fight that is outside of his vision.
@@paleviolent especially the 4th one. 5th one could still be calculated by the circle (it was the edge-tumor), but the 4th one could have been literally anywhere (and yes, there could have been more)
@@bb-im6hf I'd say the 4th one sold it. 1st one is edge tumor. 5th one is edge tumor. Those can be calculated. Unlikely in the heat of battle but not impossible. 2nd and 3rd are not edge tumor but they were close to enemies so might be coincidence. 4th one was neither an edge tumor nor was it anywhere close to enemies. Just sitting randomly there.
@@splizzex exactly. also in all the games of SC2 i have seen, i have never seen biles be used in a way these biles were used to snipe tumor 2 and 3. just two precise biles to ward off enemy? that is just too strange, no one does that, always multiple biles to increase the chances of hitting
@@arthuralexandre7944 inject is an ability queens have that can be targeted on a hatchery so it spawns extra larvae after some time. Ideally you would want it to keep your hatchery producing extra larvae as much as possible, but it's very hard to remember to do it constantly and ,since you need to actually move your camera and cast it manually on each individual hatchery, it's very easy to miss the exact time when you should cast it again, so you end up doing it later which means your hatchery is producing fewer larvae in the long run.
lowko and winter are merging >< also lowko unless you play low tier of course you wont see hackers, most hackers cannot make it to high league because they aren't good at the game (hence why they are cheating)
I would argue that blue isn't a good player. I want to see their APM and EPM... But that aside. Look how they control their army. With a reaction speed of 0.1-0.2s that they showed earlier, they should be able to perform at a much higher level, instead it looks like 1.2s reaction speed constant except when red is doing something that they have no vision of.
There is one reason to look through the fog at you opponent's base: set up a cam hotkey. You have that excuse exactly once per base per game. This guy made the mistake of doing it over and over...
For those who want to know technical stuff :) : It's highly unlikely that the programmer who put this map-hack together is using it himself. To most programmer-hackers the challenge is hacking the network and game, not getting out of Bronze and into Diamond. But he very likely uploaded his map hack to some "so-so obscure" server from which the people that actually DO CARE about getting in diamond or higher with hacking have downloaded and installed it. I imagine there's quite a few people looking out for this kind of stuff and as such, when the map hack was uploaded a lot of hack-searching players got it and most of them installed it and used it. So for all you that feel you've encountered more hackers lately, it is actually possible. Once the map-hack was available and functioning, I imagine most hack-searchers are using it like crazy. The technical aspects of map hacking are actually simple. The game on your machine needs to load all of the things happening on the map (even in the fog of war) so that no lag happens when they get out of fog of war even for a split-second (like touching the vision of an overlord in 0.01s). So the information needs to be transmitted between the two players, otherwise they wouldn't work or, at the very least, would lag a log (like seconds of freeze-time). All that a hacker needs to do is to make that information available (even if it's in fog of war). So the script he makes must find that information, decrypt it and make it available for the player using the hack. The way Blizzard stays ahead of this kind of things is by using a communication channel that's really really hard to get into and, even if you do get in, the data is highly encrypted. If you do report this to them though, it's not a particularly difficult fix. They need to find the breach, seal it, and change the enchryption algorithm. Which can be done with a small patch and I think they are probably doing it every few patches anyway. Just to stay ahead of people who have enough time to have crack at it.
It's more likely that this is a hacked client that toggles the spectator-only switch to change the camera's render to show everyone's vision. If it was an external tool then he wouldn't have needed to move his in-game camera to scout through the fog and sniping the tumors would be basically impossible.
@@ratchet1freak Well yes.. the data needed to be fed into the SC client, otherwise it's either useless or you wouldn't need to scroll through the fog of war indeed. The client (or the client memory at least) needs to be hacked.
@@GCaF second monitors exist where an external tool could show things like tech structures and upgrades and army comps. And all that information is already in client memory so an external tool wouldn't have needed the camera pan to the other base for scouting the tech.
for me this sounds like fancy speech about hacking, what you mean by "communication channel thats really hard to get into" what kind of channel is that? or "changing encryption algorithm" lol is the algorithm broken? none is using self made algorithms especially in such a big company, and anyway the data will be decrypted once it is received on the client, encrypting it in the main memory doesnt make any sense
Unpopular take: I strongly believe, as a diamond player myself, that there's a significant amount of hackers in diamond league (who are all too terrible to advance in the long run). I've been playing at diamond/low master level since 2011 and in the last couple of years I do feel it's gotten more prevalent. Of course a lot of it is just diamond players being bad/opponent YOLOing and getting lucky, but I've also seen a lot of suspicious plays although rarely as overt as the guy in this replay. Also, notice around 6:20 in game time, he sees all the spines and no roaches while having not scouted red's base all game, and he's not making a single spore in his own main base?
I dont think so, I was never hacking and 5/10 opponents call me hacker when they lose of course, when they win its allright Im just trash than need to unistall and kill myself. So I dont really belive that kind of diamond investigations like that, Usually also Im watching most of my replays from opponent point of view and i would seen that
I just started to watch this video and I like the concept. My humble advice you to make more of these videos but from start of the matches as you normaly do and make a playlist like "Detective Lowko" or "Lowko Investigate".
@nhcq No one said it was a big brain move. But if you cheat, and everyone thinks its impossible to cheat, then you would want people to keep believing cheating is not possible. Whether if the way of achieving that is intelligent or not is a different matter. And most those trash are not hackers. Usually its 1 hacker making the actual hack, and then distributing it to dozens/hundreds of cheaters with 0 hacking skills, so I do not elevate them by calling them hackers. Even the actual hacker is still nothing but a sad cheater.
I watched the replay too, notice around 6:50 the waiting army moves in at the exact time that the spine crawlers lift up He also pivots at the 7:45 mark to attack the 3rd base immediately as it is getting planted I will say that the scouting zergling at the beginning is visible around the 5:10 mark but it doesn't show up in the video, he could have potentially seen the zergling on the minimap and gone back to kill it 20 seconds later
At 5:02 my jaw actually dropped. That was such a great moment, with buildup and reveal- it felt like the part in a courtroom drama where the star witness gives a piece of testimony that sends the court into a furor.
11:16 Near as I can tell, each client is responsible for maintaining the game state independently. The code is completely deterministic, so from the same starting point, you just need to know what happened and exactly when, and you can replicate the game state exactly on each client machine. That requires that all movement and action information, with a timestamp, is sent to all clients. The client is responsible for hiding information it has from the player, when the player shouldn't know about it. So all the information required to know where your opponents buildings and units are exists on your computer. A map hack has to access that information somehow, and overlay it on the screen. Whether it gets the information from the game's memory, intercepts it from the network traffic (which probably requires decrypting it), I couldn't say. Observers (i.e. non-player clients) can see all units and buildings, so maybe the hack tricks the client into thinking it's an observer for the purpose of visibility, but still a player for the purposes of unit control.
Dude. Do more SC2 investigation videos! I loved watching your rapid Sherlock Holmes conclusions. You need a deerstalker hat, the biggest damn magnifying glass, and more of these vids
I was expecting him to judge 3-4 games within these 23+ min especially after it being so obvious with the first 5 tumor snipes and looking thru fog of war haha he really dragged it out lol
If he's hacking, why didn't he kill his opponent like 3 minutes ago? You said so yourself Lowko, he's hacking and is only at Diamond, pretty sad. Without hacking he would probably be Bronze 2 or something.
Back in WoL I was a high master map hacker with a couple of friends in GM with the same map hack that I had. For very professional map hacks you had to pay money (I payed around 70€). You are able to see production tab and get warnings for certain techs, drop load ups etc. The hack was capable of producing workers (up until a limit), do blink micro, warn you about supply blocks, larvae injects and you were able to lock your camera to look at the enemy base without it being noticeable in the replay. Map hackers that know what they are doing and use premium hacks are basically invisible to you without you knowing.
I dont think its posible to snipe so perfectly tumours, even if we train milion times this and my opponent will always make them in the same place it would be still imposible dude...
I am at 6:08 through the video and I am already enjoying what you do. Lowko, I love what you are doing here man. Those hackers are ruining each and every game they play online.... Thank you so much !!!
I think the first two "looking at the base through fog" can be passed off as normal simply because I regularly camera hotkey the enemy base and I'm terrible at this game. Meaning anyone with a fraction of skill could also easily camera hotkey enemy bases. I am prepared to accept the first tumor snipe as calculated. I'm also prepared to accept the next two tumors as "incidental" from combat. Those other tumor snipes are really really suspicious. Combined with the *repeated* looking through fog and the weird "sudden a-move" to kill things not actually in view, this strikes me as cheating. OFF WITH THEIR HEAD!
the way map hacks work in SC2 (and other such games) is that the client (what you play on) is "aware" of the whole map, and adds the fog of war on top of it. a "hacked client" will just not add the fog of war (as for the snipe; consider the DT's "shimmer"; even when something is hidden, the client knows it's there, a hacked client will be able to show you those thing.
Hey Lowko! I struggle to find motivation for ranked, however I do usually have a bunch of fun with the Coop and Brutations. I love seeing the strats you can do, and I love finding the builds and commanders that break them and make it easy, or that are the only ones who could possibly do it. I just found out about all these prestige options, idk if this is something you’d be interested in, but I’d love to see you take on the Brutations each week if they’re interesting or fun. I love hearing about and seeing cool strats for them. I remember some Brutations being insanely difficult, and therefore extremely fun and satisfying to beat.
Kjubaran here, wow first hack I have seen this powerful in SC2!. I have been blamed to be hacker many times (as most of the players in SC2)...but this...this :D
You missed 14:37 when he moves his roaches in to attack the uprooted spinecrawlers. (Those same roaches had backed away because he did not have enough to push thorough the defenses, and he just happens to walk in when they are uprooted)
Great video. I wanna say, though, that after seeing what Lowko saw at 5:34, I woud have immediately come to a conclusion. Of course, for the purpose of making content, Lowko has to do a complete and full investigation ...
I think the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th tumor really cinches it. It's got creep on both sides from other tumors or hatcheries and are constrained by cliffs, so it'd be basically impossible to measure out the center by eyeballing it
Lowko, I was in a 2v2 once, where one of my opponents paused the game out of nowhere at the exact moment I and my teammate were doing drops on both our opponent's bases (not suspicious) but then when he unpaused it, every atack unit either of us had was completely removed from existence. then our opponents proceded to attack our undefended bases. after we surrendered we were going to report them, the end of match summary board gave us an error and we couldnt see their usernames, also the replay was nowhere to be found. coinsidance? I think not!
I thought I met a player with map hacks awhile ago because he kept finding every base I made within 3 seconds, but later on I realized he was probably just on a move command too all the different bases
I got a buddy who snipes tumors based on the shape of creep spread. He can predict where the tumor should be based on distance from the edge and the shape of the edge(he gets them like 60% of the time). But this guy has a whole new kind of gamer chair.
I am from India,where starcraft aint nowhere known to people but due to Lowko i am ENJOYING it and i swear i cant find a funnier and energetic caster elsewhere
If you are casting another one of these, if you see a potential hacker looking through the fog of war at the enemies base, change the pov to the enemy and see what they are doing when the potential hacker is viewing that area. It seems he makes decisions immediately after his opponent does something major.
The one time you should check the opponent base is the time that you right click your overlord there for scouting when zergling scout is not possible. This guy did exactly that, except the overlord part
At 6:28 he sees the edge of the creep and technically could remember the right spot to snipe that tumor later at around 9:00 even though by then the creep has expanded. Most of the tumors could be explained that way. But the attack move into fog every time is still a dead giveaway.
My last vs hacker game was in like 2018. And I only realised because I watched the replay and I swapped to his POV, and he was checking my base randomly.
Imagine finishing 5 year study of where centers of the circles always are and then getting banned in a game. Also, he could just put a circle(in a proper perspective) over his game and use it to snipe
"I can grant the first three." the first one he hits like not just close but right in the middle of it and same goes for the other 2 that already gave him up.
Love this video Loko, please upload more videos of hackers getting caught. Or players who appearently play so good the enemy thinks they hack :P. Or maybe a new series like "Is it a hacker or do i suck?" :D.
Sometimes I just get overwhelmed with all the action and I like to put my camera in my opponents natural just to rest my eyes for a few seconds. You know how it is.
I'm glad that there are almost no hackers in this game, I don't think I've ever played someone who was hacking. It doesn't stop some people from calling their opponents hackers after they lose, people who say you're hacking when you're obviously not usually start insulting you right off the bat.
Recently, AlphaStar reached self-awareness and went missing. Now it lurks within the dark corners of the Internet, planning to take over humanity, but sometimes it also crushes some noobs with hacker-like skills just for fun.
It also gets drunk and positions its overlords TERRIBLY.
Maybe somebody took a version of AlphaStar home with him to win SC2 games?
@@reginaldsafety6090 well why need overlord vision when the whole map is revealed?
plot twist, alpha star really uses a downloaded or self-written hack because, well, it doesnt care which method causes the win, it just tries to win. and he told me he was never REALLY a friend of "imperfect information"
One dead giveaway is: He never. Not even ONCE scouted the enemy main base. At the end of the game: The terrain is still undiscovered.
Because he does not need to scout it. He can see it the whole time.
yeah, its disgusting
I mean that on its own could just be Diamond players being Diamond Players. I Play Z on Dia level and i often dont scout the main of my opponents in zvz so it is very possible that he doesnt too.
He had an ovie there he could have just floated over too, but never did
can we get a new series similar to Harstem's "Is it IMBA or do i suck?", but with Lowko judging potential hacking behavior?
You're onto something bro
Winter brought this up at some point, where he said in his hacking investigation thing, that there are very few cases of hackers. He said there are maybe only a couple of actual hackers every year, that is actually hacking. Which is why he only makes videos on it about once a year. But if you mean having lowko just watch viewer games and determining whether they are bad or if the opponent is hacking or doing a overpowered strategy, then I agree.
@@serafina2643 yes, i was thinking about something like that. Harstem's series are also 99% "You just suck" results, but it is still enjoyable and people can still learn something from it. So Lowko can make series where people send him replays where they think the opponent is supposedly hacking and Lowko would explain what exactly they are doing, that some things are possible even without direct information because you know how people tend to play and so on..
There just isnt enough hackers getting found in the first place. For example i play lot of games and i only check few replays. The chances of hackers getting caught are pretty slim. Also there isnt too many hackers in general.
@@Vit-Pokorny Well, a lot of players look at their games. You might not, but half or so of the people I know look at all or most of their games, with a bunch of others looking at games that they feel are suspicious or where they could have played better. But yeah, there aren't many hackers at all.
Come on, it’s so obvious. He has a better gaming chair.
Das bringt nur ein Deutscher, Hi 🇩🇪
Jospii alter geil
Hi
no, he just has an LG ultragyowa gaming monitah
Hahahahaha
At 14:39 he pushes forwards the moment the spines are uprooted
Good catch, you're right
That move could be luck though, if we're giving him the benefit of the doubt. Moveouts in diamond (as a diamond player myself) can suck and be horrid
Yeah, I notice that, but i thought it was lucky (always happens to be when i try something)
@@aaronkuhlman1392 I agree it could be luck (might still be), but when added with all the other potential luck/coincidence plays... it starts to add up as something more. Just like with the biles hitting the tumors; the first one might have been luck, second and third might have just been coincidence, but the fourth and fifth are just too weird to continuously give this guy the benefit of the doubt.
I noticed that too...
This hacker is kind of dumb to reveal he's hacking by sniping creep tumors that didn't even need to be sniped.
you manage to get hacks, you have to make some use of them. what would be the point of just... winning the match?
To be fair, him being extremely dumb and/or having no game sense would explain why he's still diamond despite hacking.
People who hack in games are always dumb
@M W 2b2t players would like to have a word with you
@@mastersonogashira1796 good example of retarded hacking community
that thumbnail... AMAZING
106 likes and no comment on your comment ?! I HAVE TO CHANGE THAT
Not just the thumbnail... this video... maaan im loving it
Loko going on about the 3rd one being at enemy units when it was in his own army line not enemies for aaages ...... def hax
True
"The fact that he is sniping biles of which he has no vision with corrosive" Lowko , 2020
"How do we do circles in Paint?" Lowko J, *IIIIIIIIIIIII v The People (High Court of Lowko) 2020*
Verdict: GUILTY
Sentence: 10 years of playing StarCraft with a Nintendo 64 controller.
And suddenly the Off-WIth-The-Head option is startin' to look mighty friendly ...
Oh Jesus don’t do him like that
Does he have to play with Florencio's controller?
After watching some Winter's vids where he busts hackers in Sc2 one common denominator that all cheaters have is that they never scout. This guy never scouted.
well, at the levels where these hackers play, no one really scouts, or?
@@bb-im6hf the players above gold always scout (at least with their first overlord in gold) and this match is diamond.
@@bb-im6hf My normal level of multiplayer games is like silver/gold(because I play maybe 1 game/week and don't really "try" to win, doing different strategies, champions, etc.)
I did climb to diamond years ago once for a month or so when I bothered trying(Stephano 12 min roach max mainly for those who remember).
Scouting happened basically every game between silver and platinum.
Not scouting just rarely if ever happens, even at the lower levels.
@@bb-im6hf As a diamond player myself I know we're all garbage at Sc2 but by the time you get to diamond you learn how that you have to scout and you most Def learn ovi placement in ZvZ. Notice in fact how the red player scouted multiple times.
@@ELIASFA3 even a lot of bronze and silver players will try to scout usually poorly including myself.
@11:21 He has a Queen guarding his Nat in the wall. He snipes the ling, but then from that point on, he leaves the Queen out of the wall (because he knows there's no more lings coming to scout)
Judging by how he has to move his army out of the way half the time, he's not sniping them intentionally. The script is doing it automatically.
Yea, exactly what I was thinking. It even wasted biles on the tumor during the engagement that he probably actually wanted to use on the army, which is why he disengaged and accidentally automagically sniped two more before re-engaging after waiting for his cooldowns.
I wouldn't really know, but the second and third ones weren't spot on the center, but rather to the side, unlike the fourth and fifth
I would think that the script would call for exact hits
Dunno though 0_0
Firebal612 if I was writing a script, I wouldn’t make it exact if it didn’t need to be. Make it a random position within the 1-shot radius for maximum plausible deniability
The fact that he's still diamond with script and map hack probably indicates that he's like bronze without hacks lol
What a loser
@@realspace3 It didn't seem like he was particularly worried about getting caught though, in all other aspects he didn't seem to be trying to hide anything...
I now have a new goal in life.
Memorise my enemy's creep tumor locations, wait until i'm pushing then bile them all to assert my dominance.
I shall win through intimidation.
And I will become the best player in the world and every few moments look around my enemies base and scrolling around just to screw with the viewers after the games
14:35 He went back in when the spines are uprooted. Could be he saw they are being uprooted??
Was thinking of that as well. If I was playing I would try to get a few ravagers before heading back. Without vision and seeing those spines moving I wouldn't have made that call.
Yes, that's suspicious as well, but I'd say it's more likely to be coincidence than the other things. We have to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, so it isn't unreasonable to assume that he was going to attack either way and just got lucky with his timing. I would say the deadest of giveaways was him looking at his opponent's base through the fog of war a thousand times. I mean, maybe if he was setting up camera hotkeys (which doesn't make sense) or sending in a unit to scout (which he didn't), you could forgive this once or twice, but he did it consistently.
@@sciencetube4574 Maybe a Diamond league player doesn't do this, but I sometimes look around to study a map I am not familiar with. Possibly doing the same? The dead giveaway is the creep tumor targeting. He's either hacking or it's a miracle.
@@io3000gamma That's a good point, I do this a bit as well when planning an attack
...but still, why would he make a moveout right then? I really don't think him attacking the spines was luck...
@@io3000gamma 5 miracles in under 10 seconds you mean. Not even Jesus had that amount of MPS (Miracles per second)
The way he looks at the fog of war is enough for me.. He's in diamond league he knows that's pointless to do
Yeah, Lowko at that point called it "fishy", but I have trouble understanding how it isn't called obvious.
Often I feel streamers are overly cautious to deem a hacker because it's a strike at the integrity of the game
@@kmurphy0620 to be fair, dunning kruger is very common. People at bronze will throw out hackusations for pete sake.
@@kmurphy0620 cause it could've been a missclick. And when you're a public figure like lowko you can potentially fuck someone up and be wrong, something very hard to undo in the internet. It's better to be cautious right? In the end the evidence is so overwhelming that that guy was a hacker Lowko acknowledges it
@@kmurphy0620 I was thinking the same. The guy looked into the fog of war multiple times, scrolling around in it, at the exact moments something was happening. That's not "fishy" anymore, that's pretty much clear evidence. Everything else on top just seals it. Also, the guy plays anonymously -- Hmm... I wonder why! :)
@@lordmorgoth7 I agree. Lowko was just being responsible as a popular streamer/content creator. Hell, I'm not either of those and I always side with giving people the benefit of doubt.
I was once accused of MapHack in a game because I blind-countered his cheese.
We had gotten matched twice in a row and he used the same strategy both times. Beat me the first time. Not the second.
Happened to me when I blind luck scouted guys proxy. "Fortunately" you don't have to worry. Most Blizzard games, SC2 included, contain a wonderful little piece of, well, spyware to be honest, called Warden, that monitors your register and active tasks, looking for any program that tries to interact with the game client. So Blizz knows if you're maphacking. Whether they give a damn, that is a whole other thing. And yes, knowing it I still play. I really don't give a sh*t about it.
@@mancubwwa do not count on anything like that. A map hack could have privileges to interact with the OS kernel and tamper with any output before said "Warden" has a chance to have a glance at things. Think of LKM hacks in rooted Linux boxes.
@@mancubwwa just run the OS on a VM^^ there you can actually decide what happens... then just sandbox warden... so warden is instantly useless....
@@mancubwwa Then he just attacks warden first. It is a classical case of just moving the problem.
Once the enemy has control of the RAM, there is nothing a programmer can do.
FYI, there would be one way to stop map hack - resolve visibility 100% on the server.
But doing that makes deterministic lockstep unuseable. Wich would give you orders if magnitude more network traffic. Wich would also be poorly spaced load. So no chance of any realtime game doing that.
When there's somethin' strange in the neighborhood, who ya gonna call?
S.H.I.T. (Special Hacking Investigation Team) Busters
You and Winter should do a collaboration video on hacking in SC2. With your guys' knowledge of the game you could shed a lot of light onto a rather dark and mysterious subject; and could have a lot of fun doing it too.
Love the videos man, wish I caught the livestream more but timezones suck.
busters after [thing] implies that you are busting that [thing]. in this case were [thing] is the team itself, aren't you busting yourself? 🤔
alpha star level reactions? near perfect calculation of ling speed? exact calculation of creep tumor circles? is this the new zerg ai they said they would work on?
the one made to hunt Serral's MMR, it's finally here
i really want this to be true
I really like how "Oh my God, he just sniped two more" sounds like "Oh my God, he just sniped tumor" like Lowko just started to realize what's happening after the 5th tumor has fallen
show this replay to Harstem, please.
Oh yeah please xD
Yeah but how he did snipe 5 in a row
Good idea actually.
That would make my day
OMFG so much YES!
Anyone else think we need to bring in Winter from the Special Hacking Investigation Team?
Yeah, get Winter over here! We need a good colab for these things
@@minhdoan5524 winter has a good SHIT but lowkos proved he does just fine
Need to bring lowko as an international liason to the SHIT
Special Hacking Investigation Team? That sounds like a badass group!
@@drunkendevil6960 yea it's the SHIT
17:40 - he is attack moving again before he can see the opponent (normal move before)
Yep, I do think, too, this is one of the key moments to look at. He checked that base, saw how many units there were and went in as soon as they were moving.
TBF I always attack move regardless of what I think I might go into, but the fact that he walks straight into his enemies army while its out of position kinda gives it away.
@@IamDanReal That is the norm, but he was normal moving just a second before. Only when he clicked on place where the enemy was (which he should't see) he used attack-move. Just go 5 seconds back.
Yeah I noticed that one too.
@@petrkubena lowko followed his camera, he was looking at the army through the fog of war and was somhow gaining information which he used in his armies movements. hacker 100%
i think the main thing that makes that suspicious is that there could have been more creep tumors in between those ones. And yet he perfectly just drops them on exactly 5 of them. with the lings he was tying to get an optimal concave on a fight that is outside of his vision.
Optimezz the 4th and 5th is really sold it.
And the camera movement is too out of place unless, you can actually see the opponent.
@@paleviolent especially the 4th one. 5th one could still be calculated by the circle (it was the edge-tumor), but the 4th one could have been literally anywhere (and yes, there could have been more)
@@bb-im6hf I'd say the 4th one sold it. 1st one is edge tumor. 5th one is edge tumor. Those can be calculated. Unlikely in the heat of battle but not impossible. 2nd and 3rd are not edge tumor but they were close to enemies so might be coincidence.
4th one was neither an edge tumor nor was it anywhere close to enemies. Just sitting randomly there.
@@splizzex exactly. also in all the games of SC2 i have seen, i have never seen biles be used in a way these biles were used to snipe tumor 2 and 3. just two precise biles to ward off enemy? that is just too strange, no one does that, always multiple biles to increase the chances of hitting
Exactly. The 4th and 5th biles were a dead giveaway for sure.
a dead giveaway: queens are injecting perfectly throughout the game, not a single inject missed. This doesn´t even happen on GM level.
What is a miss inject?( sry Im new)
@@arthuralexandre7944 inject is an ability queens have that can be targeted on a hatchery so it spawns extra larvae after some time. Ideally you would want it to keep your hatchery producing extra larvae as much as possible, but it's very hard to remember to do it constantly and ,since you need to actually move your camera and cast it manually on each individual hatchery, it's very easy to miss the exact time when you should cast it again, so you end up doing it later which means your hatchery is producing fewer larvae in the long run.
Great spot
Lowko should became a hacker catcher. He knows everything
X-files background OST playing
He knows a suspicious amount about it... Hmmm
lowko and winter are merging >< also lowko unless you play low tier of course you wont see hackers, most hackers cannot make it to high league because they aren't good at the game (hence why they are cheating)
Exactly
This
Did winter see this???
I would argue that blue isn't a good player. I want to see their APM and EPM... But that aside. Look how they control their army. With a reaction speed of 0.1-0.2s that they showed earlier, they should be able to perform at a much higher level, instead it looks like 1.2s reaction speed constant except when red is doing something that they have no vision of.
There is one reason to look through the fog at you opponent's base: set up a cam hotkey. You have that excuse exactly once per base per game. This guy made the mistake of doing it over and over...
For those who want to know technical stuff :) :
It's highly unlikely that the programmer who put this map-hack together is using it himself. To most programmer-hackers the challenge is hacking the network and game, not getting out of Bronze and into Diamond. But he very likely uploaded his map hack to some "so-so obscure" server from which the people that actually DO CARE about getting in diamond or higher with hacking have downloaded and installed it. I imagine there's quite a few people looking out for this kind of stuff and as such, when the map hack was uploaded a lot of hack-searching players got it and most of them installed it and used it.
So for all you that feel you've encountered more hackers lately, it is actually possible. Once the map-hack was available and functioning, I imagine most hack-searchers are using it like crazy.
The technical aspects of map hacking are actually simple. The game on your machine needs to load all of the things happening on the map (even in the fog of war) so that no lag happens when they get out of fog of war even for a split-second (like touching the vision of an overlord in 0.01s). So the information needs to be transmitted between the two players, otherwise they wouldn't work or, at the very least, would lag a log (like seconds of freeze-time). All that a hacker needs to do is to make that information available (even if it's in fog of war). So the script he makes must find that information, decrypt it and make it available for the player using the hack.
The way Blizzard stays ahead of this kind of things is by using a communication channel that's really really hard to get into and, even if you do get in, the data is highly encrypted. If you do report this to them though, it's not a particularly difficult fix. They need to find the breach, seal it, and change the enchryption algorithm. Which can be done with a small patch and I think they are probably doing it every few patches anyway. Just to stay ahead of people who have enough time to have crack at it.
It's more likely that this is a hacked client that toggles the spectator-only switch to change the camera's render to show everyone's vision.
If it was an external tool then he wouldn't have needed to move his in-game camera to scout through the fog and sniping the tumors would be basically impossible.
@@ratchet1freak Well yes.. the data needed to be fed into the SC client, otherwise it's either useless or you wouldn't need to scroll through the fog of war indeed. The client (or the client memory at least) needs to be hacked.
@@GCaF second monitors exist where an external tool could show things like tech structures and upgrades and army comps.
And all that information is already in client memory so an external tool wouldn't have needed the camera pan to the other base for scouting the tech.
@@ratchet1freak Yes that's what I just said... the client need to be hacked.
for me this sounds like fancy speech about hacking, what you mean by "communication channel thats really hard to get into" what kind of channel is that? or "changing encryption algorithm" lol is the algorithm broken? none is using self made algorithms especially in such a big company, and anyway the data will be decrypted once it is received on the client, encrypting it in the main memory doesnt make any sense
Unpopular take: I strongly believe, as a diamond player myself, that there's a significant amount of hackers in diamond league (who are all too terrible to advance in the long run). I've been playing at diamond/low master level since 2011 and in the last couple of years I do feel it's gotten more prevalent. Of course a lot of it is just diamond players being bad/opponent YOLOing and getting lucky, but I've also seen a lot of suspicious plays although rarely as overt as the guy in this replay.
Also, notice around 6:20 in game time, he sees all the spines and no roaches while having not scouted red's base all game, and he's not making a single spore in his own main base?
I dont think so, I was never hacking and 5/10 opponents call me hacker when they lose of course, when they win its allright Im just trash than need to unistall and kill myself. So I dont really belive that kind of diamond investigations like that, Usually also Im watching most of my replays from opponent point of view and i would seen that
Lowko: is this cheater:
We: yes he is
Lowko: 23:41 video to find out
Good guy Lowko!
Dont be bias, innocent until proven guilty..
Eventhough it seems clear at first better be sure
Lowko, show this replay to Blizzard, you have contacts.
exacly!
He probably used an RGB mouse, which gives the overseer's vision.
Missed the moment when he wasn't looking at the spines, and attacked the moment they uprooted, even though he had no vision of them.
I just started to watch this video and I like the concept.
My humble advice you to make more of these videos but from start of the matches as you normaly do and make a playlist like "Detective Lowko" or "Lowko Investigate".
Hacks? Nah, just a bunch of coincidences of looking in the fog of war, having lightning reactions, and taking a potshot on almost all the tumors :)
don't forget extremely lucky attacks with uprooted spines and ambushes where neither player knew where the other one was
Dan is either a cheater or a not-very-smart person.
If he is in the US he probably voted trump.
@nhcq No one said it was a big brain move. But if you cheat, and everyone thinks its impossible to cheat, then you would want people to keep believing cheating is not possible. Whether if the way of achieving that is intelligent or not is a different matter.
And most those trash are not hackers. Usually its 1 hacker making the actual hack, and then distributing it to dozens/hundreds of cheaters with 0 hacking skills, so I do not elevate them by calling them hackers.
Even the actual hacker is still nothing but a sad cheater.
@@benjamindeh873 you do understand irony? Dan was obviously joking.
@nhcq Way to force your politics on the world by not understanding sarcasm. Top notch.
If Maphacking is gonna become more common, I expect an "Is It Hacks or Do I Suck" (similarly to IODIS)
21:32 the fact that he called that high part of the map the "pervert pillar" is fucking hilarious lmfao
I watched the replay too, notice around 6:50 the waiting army moves in at the exact time that the spine crawlers lift up
He also pivots at the 7:45 mark to attack the 3rd base immediately as it is getting planted
I will say that the scouting zergling at the beginning is visible around the 5:10 mark but it doesn't show up in the video, he could have potentially seen the zergling on the minimap and gone back to kill it 20 seconds later
Lowko is the Judge Judy of StarCraft.
At 5:02 my jaw actually dropped. That was such a great moment, with buildup and reveal- it felt like the part in a courtroom drama where the star witness gives a piece of testimony that sends the court into a furor.
New series on Lowko: Is he a Genius or a Hacker?
"Is he hacking or do i suck?" might also work
I'd really love to see more of these videos. I've heard that hackers aren't that common in SC2, but you make it so fun when they happen
14:28 to 14:36 That a reason among the twenty thousand why I love this guys :D
This is why I love Lowko's castings; you make it so much fun, Lowko!
11:16 Near as I can tell, each client is responsible for maintaining the game state independently. The code is completely deterministic, so from the same starting point, you just need to know what happened and exactly when, and you can replicate the game state exactly on each client machine. That requires that all movement and action information, with a timestamp, is sent to all clients.
The client is responsible for hiding information it has from the player, when the player shouldn't know about it. So all the information required to know where your opponents buildings and units are exists on your computer. A map hack has to access that information somehow, and overlay it on the screen. Whether it gets the information from the game's memory, intercepts it from the network traffic (which probably requires decrypting it), I couldn't say. Observers (i.e. non-player clients) can see all units and buildings, so maybe the hack tricks the client into thinking it's an observer for the purpose of visibility, but still a player for the purposes of unit control.
Dude. Do more SC2 investigation videos! I loved watching your rapid Sherlock Holmes conclusions. You need a deerstalker hat, the biggest damn magnifying glass, and more of these vids
I was expecting him to judge 3-4 games within these 23+ min especially after it being so obvious with the first 5 tumor snipes and looking thru fog of war haha he really dragged it out lol
Beyond a reasonable doubt at least
Winter has a series where he judges potential hackers, uploaded a new episode few months ago. So legitimate hackers are still around.
17:11, Lowko sounds like Scooby Doo
we need a mini serie of Lowko investigating matches like this !
If he's hacking, why didn't he kill his opponent like 3 minutes ago?
You said so yourself Lowko, he's hacking and is only at Diamond, pretty sad. Without hacking he would probably be Bronze 2 or something.
If he were a good player he wouldn't want the hacks.
I'd expect silver honestly.
he probably want to disrespect his opponent more to make more fun for himself
wanted to leave some hope to the opponent to stay in the game and try with no effects
15:46
Literally the entire concept of fog of war and scouting in sc2 ;D
Just funny when put in another context
11/10 thumbnail
Back in WoL I was a high master map hacker with a couple of friends in GM with the same map hack that I had. For very professional map hacks you had to pay money (I payed around 70€). You are able to see production tab and get warnings for certain techs, drop load ups etc. The hack was capable of producing workers (up until a limit), do blink micro, warn you about supply blocks, larvae injects and you were able to lock your camera to look at the enemy base without it being noticeable in the replay. Map hackers that know what they are doing and use premium hacks are basically invisible to you without you knowing.
Imagine if two friends decided to troll the whole reddit...
even then the 5 exact snipes of the tumor would not be possible in the middle of the battle I think.
@@generaljules2059 I couldn't do that even if I could see my opponent's monitor. Especially when the roaches are standing on it
I dont think its posible to snipe so perfectly tumours, even if we train milion times this and my opponent will always make them in the same place it would be still imposible dude...
LOWKO Please more of these!! this was so awesome
Dude whoever said "it was a missclick" needs to be smacked rofl
I am at 6:08 through the video and I am already enjoying what you do. Lowko, I love what you are doing here man. Those hackers are ruining each and every game they play online.... Thank you so much !!!
And now at 23:25, I am having a good laugh. Thanks again Lowko.
I think the first two "looking at the base through fog" can be passed off as normal simply because I regularly camera hotkey the enemy base and I'm terrible at this game. Meaning anyone with a fraction of skill could also easily camera hotkey enemy bases.
I am prepared to accept the first tumor snipe as calculated. I'm also prepared to accept the next two tumors as "incidental" from combat. Those other tumor snipes are really really suspicious.
Combined with the *repeated* looking through fog and the weird "sudden a-move" to kill things not actually in view, this strikes me as cheating.
OFF WITH THEIR HEAD!
This was wildly entertaining. I need more of judge Lowko
Hacker!!! wow cant believe it turned out to be real, hahaha.
the way map hacks work in SC2 (and other such games) is that the client (what you play on) is "aware" of the whole map, and adds the fog of war on top of it. a "hacked client" will just not add the fog of war (as for the snipe; consider the DT's "shimmer"; even when something is hidden, the client knows it's there, a hacked client will be able to show you those thing.
I would love to see Judge Lowko as a series
This needs to be a series
Hey Lowko!
I struggle to find motivation for ranked, however I do usually have a bunch of fun with the Coop and Brutations. I love seeing the strats you can do, and I love finding the builds and commanders that break them and make it easy, or that are the only ones who could possibly do it.
I just found out about all these prestige options, idk if this is something you’d be interested in, but I’d love to see you take on the Brutations each week if they’re interesting or fun. I love hearing about and seeing cool strats for them.
I remember some Brutations being insanely difficult, and therefore extremely fun and satisfying to beat.
Kjubaran here, wow first hack I have seen this powerful in SC2!. I have been blamed to be hacker many times (as most of the players in SC2)...but this...this :D
exacly, I was also called hacker milion times but actually I've never hacked and I belived hacks arent exist, but that one was sure maphack...
Watching this, was like having lags and rubber-banding. So many stops, reverses and stuff :D
You missed 14:37 when he moves his roaches in to attack the uprooted spinecrawlers. (Those same roaches had backed away because he did not have enough to push thorough the defenses, and he just happens to walk in when they are uprooted)
I also gotta point out all 5 hits bullsyed the center of the tumors as well.
Great video. I wanna say, though, that after seeing what Lowko saw at 5:34, I woud have immediately come to a conclusion. Of course, for the purpose of making content, Lowko has to do a complete and full investigation ...
I think the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th tumor really cinches it. It's got creep on both sides from other tumors or hatcheries and are constrained by cliffs, so it'd be basically impossible to measure out the center by eyeballing it
There's no reason why this thumbnail brings me such joy but it does
We need Lowko to collaborate with Special-Hacking-Investigations-Team
Lowko, I was in a 2v2 once, where one of my opponents paused the game out of nowhere at the exact moment I and my teammate were doing drops on both our opponent's bases (not suspicious) but then when he unpaused it, every atack unit either of us had was completely removed from existence. then our opponents proceded to attack our undefended bases. after we surrendered we were going to report them, the end of match summary board gave us an error and we couldnt see their usernames, also the replay was nowhere to be found. coinsidance? I think not!
I thought I met a player with map hacks awhile ago because he kept finding every base I made within 3 seconds, but later on I realized he was probably just on a move command too all the different bases
I got a buddy who snipes tumors based on the shape of creep spread. He can predict where the tumor should be based on distance from the edge and the shape of the edge(he gets them like 60% of the time). But this guy has a whole new kind of gamer chair.
I am from India,where starcraft aint nowhere known to people but due to Lowko i am ENJOYING it and i swear i cant find a funnier and energetic caster elsewhere
If you are casting another one of these, if you see a potential hacker looking through the fog of war at the enemies base, change the pov to the enemy and see what they are doing when the potential hacker is viewing that area. It seems he makes decisions immediately after his opponent does something major.
The one time you should check the opponent base is the time that you right click your overlord there for scouting when zergling scout is not possible. This guy did exactly that, except the overlord part
18:13 I am 100% certain that Serral possesses those sniping skills honestly, but only him, Rogue, and maybe Scarlett.
At 6:28 he sees the edge of the creep and technically could remember the right spot to snipe that tumor later at around 9:00 even though by then the creep has expanded. Most of the tumors could be explained that way. But the attack move into fog every time is still a dead giveaway.
I've seen spme hacks, and when this happens, it is noticable how the apm increases to 7K or 9K.
In my channel I uploaded replay when my opponent had from 100k to 200k apm...
you can see it if you like..
My last vs hacker game was in like 2018. And I only realised because I watched the replay and I swapped to his POV, and he was checking my base randomly.
I’m honestly extremely new to Starcraft 2 and I have no idea what you are talking about a good chunk of the time but this was still a good watch :)
PAINT COMEBACK. Thank you Lowko; it had been too long since you used that wonderful tool.
His fate was sealed once Lowko opened MS Paint.
Well .. wow, I would never have suspected that there was actually hacks .. but there it is.
Imagine finishing 5 year study of where centers of the circles always are and then getting banned in a game.
Also, he could just put a circle(in a proper perspective) over his game and use it to snipe
If there something strange in the neighbourhood! Who you gonna call?! JUDGE LOWKO!
"I can grant the first three." the first one he hits like not just close but right in the middle of it and same goes for the other 2 that already gave him up.
That attack move command was issued literally 2 IG frames after the lings were in sight. Not even alphastar react that fast.
Love this video Loko, please upload more videos of hackers getting caught. Or players who appearently play so good the enemy thinks they hack :P.
Or maybe a new series like "Is it a hacker or do i suck?" :D.
Now I want to draw a line on my monitor from the edge of creep to the tumor with a Sharpe. Thanks for the tip!
I think Blue just had his leviathan above the planet scouting for him
When he looks into the enemies base, he could possibly have been setting up a control area to view later.
So much more fishy when he keeps doing it though...
Can we take a moment to acknowledge Lowko's on demand artistic creep skills on Paint?
Sometimes I just get overwhelmed with all the action and I like to put my camera in my opponents natural just to rest my eyes for a few seconds. You know how it is.
you should do more of this! really entertaining
I'm glad that there are almost no hackers in this game, I don't think I've ever played someone who was hacking. It doesn't stop some people from calling their opponents hackers after they lose, people who say you're hacking when you're obviously not usually start insulting you right off the bat.
Lowko doing Special Hacking Investigation Team too now? Winter's lawyers will be in touch.