A Look Back at how Changes to Blizzard’s Policies Eased the Hacker Problem in Asia
What’s an Aimbot?
Cheating has always been a problem in any game’s competitive play. Overwatch is no exception, even with Blizzard’s tendency of regular ban waves. With aimbots, wall hacks, and DDOS attacks as their tools, hackers tend to ruin games that they are in. In Overwatch, the Asian region was infamous for having rampant hackers playing from “PC Bangs”, or computer shops in Korea. Koreans can play Overwatch for free at a PC Bang, paying for the time rather than the game. In Korea, playing in a PC Bang is a cheaper and more popular option than playing at home, a sort of “gaming haven” from a work-filled day. Overwatch is the second most played game in PC Bangs, behind League of Legends.
Last February, the changes to the Battle.net account policy took effect. As announced in an official blog post (translation), they took action against VPN companies who distributed PC Bang IP’s, which allowed users to reap the perks of free gameplay and extra benefits from anywhere. They also searched for solutions to improve cheat detection. Most important to players was that “only players with valid game licenses in their Battle.net account home region will be able to play Overwatch in Korea.” This means that accounts registered outside of Korea cannot play Overwatch for free in a PC Bang if they don’t have the license- which means they have to buy the game first. This does not affect Korean-based accounts in any way- regardless of their possession of the game license. This softened the hacker problem in Asian servers, but how so?
Korean players have their accounts tied to their KSSN (Korean Social Security Number) upon registration. Before the policy changes, hackers bypassed this by the use of a VPN to create an account based outside of Korea. They were still able to play for free as they played from a PC Bang. Upon the ban of this new account, they used the VPN to make another account, repeating the process over and over again. Bans based on IP addresses were impossible due to the computers’ public use. All the while, this protected their main account, tied to their KSSN, from a ban. Players who play at PC Bangs for free have region restrictions, thus the concentration of all Korean hackers was in the Asian region.
The large number of hackers in Asia affected the Korean Overwatch scene. PC Bang players stopped playing the game as they would match-up against these hackers. Korean players who owned a license would instead queue in the Americas, suffering from latency issues and a language barrier. There was even a kind of hack, termed as “nuking”, which would allow hackers to affect games they are in- block spawn exits, change enemy heroes, change the map, block enemy movement, and even completely boot the enemy player out of the server. A hacker was even able to reach the highest rank of 5000 SR and stayed on the leaderboards for some time before their ban! In-game, the hackers were usually the accounts between level 25–100, with Bastion and Soldier:76 as their most played heroes. While players reported and played for draws in games they were in, the hackers kept making new accounts each ban wave. Thus, the lack of a concrete punishment ruined the quality of games on the Asian server.
With the changes put in place by Blizzard Korea, the hackers now have to pay full price to play Overwatch on other “foreign” accounts. Now, their only free option is to play in a PC Bang with their sole KSSN-tied account, risking a complete ban from all Blizzard games. The Korean Government has also taken steps against cheating in games, with a law illegalizing the creation and distribution of programs forbidden by the game companies and the Terms of Service. It became costly to cheat in Korea, for both cheating players and program creators (jail time and fines) alike.
Nowadays, there are a lot fewer hackers in the Asian region, which in turn caused the Koreans to stay within Asia. The Korean Overwatch scene has borne fruit, especially with the APEX league. Lunatic-Hai, the top team in Korea, has been announced to be the Seoul team of the Overwatch League. Blizzard itself has globally worked on their report system, with many categories of abuse available as options. Blizzard also sends emails, notifying reporters when they have taken action against one of the players they have reported. Loud and clear the policy put a twist on one of Blizzard’s core values- “play fair, play nice, or don’t play at all.”
