Dear Blizzard
I am a StarCraft mapmaker who has been targeted by hackers on Battle net who want to prevent my maps (Footmen Frenzy and Diplomacy or War East - both available on Gamemaps) from being played and shared online.
These hackers have been at me since 2010. They come join my game and wait for it to start. When it starts, however, within 2-5 minutes, they leave the game, and I remake the game, only to have other players join and leave once the game starts. Afterwards, until the next day, I am unable to get games started because not enough people join my games. They can join and leave, and this somehow prevents other people from joining my game.
I’ve literally seen it happen with broadcasters on Twitch or AfreecaTV, who tried to join my games but could not until I remade the game room.
These hackers insist on avoiding playing the game full house because I am afraid they are able to inject a malicious code in the program when there is an empty player slot. And when I am able to get a full house, they do their shenanigans such as disconnecting everyone, leaving immediately or within a few minutes, or making constant insults such as “the game host’s mom got f**ked” in Korean (on Korean server) or English (in US server).
They are literally online 24/7 - it doesn’t matter when I try to host. They keep making new accounts and joining my games and leaving or dropping everyone or making insults, it’s getting tiring. I’ve had to deal with this issue since 2010, when it was much worse and more difficult, as, back then, they could prevent me from logging into Battle net entirely. I found a workaround solution by deleting the Blizzard Entertainment and Battle net folders in the registry editor (regedit).
Even now, given the chance, they can crash my StarCraft program and completely ruin it using their hacking tools. When this happens, I get a notification saying that I got disconnected, and if I click “ok”, then the entire program freezes and breaks down, and, until I uninstall and reinstall the entire program and delete the relevant registry folders in regedit, I am unable to play the game. The only way to prevent this is to immediately close StarCraft program in Task Manager before any more damage can be done.
They never tire of insulting me or my maps - Footmen Frenzy and Diplomacy or War East - and they are literally on 24/7. I have no idea what they do for a living or why they are trying to prevent my maps from being played because it just doesn’t make any sense. They’ve been at it since 2010.
This happens in US servers and Korea and Asia servers (pretty much all the servers), although it appears to happen less in US servers and much more frequently in Korea and Asia servers.
I used to live in Korea, and I experienced the same thing on Battle net and fish servers while living there, so the argument that people in Korea and Asia servers do not join my games because of latency is not valid. Also, I set the turn rate to 10, so there is no lag on my part, contrary to how the hackers falsely claim (that I lag and that’s why no one is joining my games).
They come to my game and spam “ㄱㄱㄱㄱㄱㄱㄱ” in Korean (“gogogogo”) literally 50 times before leaving, and sometimes they are frank with me saying that “no one is able to join this game. Just start.” They also never tire of insulting my map, saying it’s no fun and that’s why no one is joining.
That a complete falsehood because I have online StarCraft friends who really enjoy playing my ,custom maps , although not enough of them are usually online to get a game started.
I am not making this stuff up.
Whether you believe me or not, please help me cope with this situation by allowing for an IP ban feature similar to the one available on Tabletop Simulator.
This IP ban would allow a user to ban someone without knowing their IP but with seeing their last seen user ID.
Thank you for listening to my story.
Sincerely
C