14 DAY TRIAL // There are a lot of people out there who are intimidated by strong competition, and thus resort to cheating to boost their ego. Developer Blizzard Entertainment is determined to deal with them, and issued a warning to all StarCraft 2 players who would attempt such shenanigans.
Why Blizzard would enforce a strict "no cheating" policy with its greatest competitive game yet is a no-brainer, as the game's highly-competitive nature is the very essence of its prolonged success.
The warning advised players who plan or consider cheating in StarCraft 2 that they will be banned, and that bans will be permanent, in accordance with the game's end user license agreement.
There are a number of ways in which the developer combats cheaters, such as the in-game reporting system that end users can make use of. At the Score Screen, you can select a player's name to open a drop-down menu from which you can pick "More" and the "Report Player" in order to open the respective dialog, where you can select the option "cheating" and provide a description of what specifically made you suspicious.
Users can also send the company replays of the game that was played against the suspected cheater, which the dev then analyzes in order to ascertain the accused player's guilt, via email, by providing a replay file or URL link to one.
But the company is also employing other methods of discovering hack program usage, some fancy software detection tools that the company is pretty protective of.
"While we can't go into much detail about these methods, we can say that players caught cheating in this way are generally banned in waves. This is done so as not to tip off program developers regarding our detection methods, as well as to maximize the return on our detection effects," the developers say in the official announcement.
"Ban waves are issued in contrast to the other methods mentioned above, where bans are issued on an individual, account-by-account basis. Through these means, any player who is determined to be in violation of our terms and conditions by using hacks, cheats, mods or any other unauthorized third-party software will be banned," the blurb reads.
Since StarCraft 2 came out in July, 2010, it has been a mainstay of competitive events all across the world, replacing its predecessor, StarCraft: Brood War, considered one of the primary driving forces behind today's competitive gaming scene and widespread appeal of eSports.