Its been 5 years and I still cant figure out if Hamster is a real person or just Harstem being schizophrenic.

New series: was this a hacker or does he suck?

11:15 There is a very suspicious click/move to attack a marine BEFORE the marine is in vision

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

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.

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 KZfaqr could be so incredible as to make a series like this.

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.

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

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.

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’.

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 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.

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.

That message doesnt look like quenya, or sindarin. Not sure though, as i do not speak the many elvish languages.

11:15 is the smoking gun, if you slow it down you see him react before the marine is in vision.

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.

I learned more about starcraft from your commentary in this video than any other video from anybody else

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)

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.

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.

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.

With no vision of the army, he knew to chase down the army as it moved away.

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...

@4:58 "you're going to see it on your mapp-happing-minimap anyway" say it quickly five times!

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

I hope UpATree send you the replay of the hacker he played... it was so obvious.

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.

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.

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 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.

1:22 I think your editor got severely brain damaged.

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.

hi harstem loving your videos

Legit A-moved “HE’S hacking!!!”

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 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.

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.

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

Djorjx accusing someone of hacking is pretty ironic, it's always the fishy ones who make the accusations.

Absolutely love these "catch a hacker" video series. Keep fighting the good fight Harstem!

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

Have you ever had a hacker submit a video themselves and busted them in the act? Lol

Plot twist: djorjx was the hacker.

To know how hacker would play you have to become one.

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.

harstem is the prettiest man alive XD

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.

LMAO this guy is so clearly hacking as so many people pointed out in the comments before me to the numerous supecious things.

I see a new Poopman upload, I click

Very humble xD

I´m fairly certain that barcode player was Harstem getting caught hacking and now he is trying to cover it up

Looks like a hacker, think you got it wrong cap.

How hard is it to just find more replays from this person? It feels sus enough to to pull another replay and check it.

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.

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.

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

Ignore me, just shanking the algorithm. Have a nice day! :P

I have a hacker feel. The three stalker at the begining moving towards the units is veeeeery sus to me.

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.

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.

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.

True genius here, according to my estimations the chances of this person cheating is 39.22%, repeating of course.

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.

1:21 wtf this this white text even supposed to mean?

in Elvish language :D Poor dutch ppl

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.

Dutch isn't Elvish. The Baltic languages are Elvish. Have you ever heard a group of Estonians speak? It's hilarious.

poopman does it again

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

Na he clean

100% Hacking you're kidding yourself if you think he's playing legit

Ein bisschen lucky? Man sieht die varheit?

Funny to call these people "hackers", they just download an exe and cheat their way through ladder.

Obv not a hacker

I swear to God Dutch is not a real language

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.

5400 MMR is mid GM nowadays, not low GM

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.

we love you hartem but stop fucking explain so much

PLEASE STOP ADVERTISING HACKING PLEASE HARSTEM

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

How hard is it to just find more replays from this person? It feels sus enough to to pull another replay and check it.