Blizzard purges 5,000 Battlenet accounts

Blizzard has purged at least 5,000 Battlenet accounts belonging to players who were caught cheating and hacking maps in Starcraft 2.

As Tom Senior of PC Gamer points out, one of the most “prevalent problems” in Starcraft 2 is the practice of illicitly maphacking the game client, which allows users to view an entire map during multiplayer sessions.  

“The video is a replay from the perspective of a player using such a hack. At 1:13 the player moves the camera to look at the southern area of the map,” wrote Senior.

“In the final seconds he sends his probes to attack a Barracks being built there, even though the area [wasn’t] scouted.

“[Still], he knows it’s there because he’s hacked his copy of Starcraft 2 and can see everything that the Terran player is doing.”

Ouch!