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| Doodsmack United States. July 16 2012 16:29. Posts 2107 | Profile Blog # |
Disclaimer: This is a topic that has never received a well-noticed thread in the SC2 General section. I feel a thread is warranted and productive because it brings to light a potentially harmful practice and enables the community to hold accountable those engaging in the practice. Increased public exposure could serve as a deterrent to those currently selling this service, and the community could potentially identify more GM accounts that may be leveled. You may argue that I'm merely dragging people's names through the dirt, and that I should have just PMed them instead of making a thread. But, I think you'll see that this is widespread enough to make a thread.
SC2 progamers are selling account leveling services that bring an unknown number of accounts into GM and high master. Certain featured streamers have leveled accounts on stream and then been told by TL mods to stop. A simple Google search yields websites and forum threads devoted to leveling services, with claims that well-known progamers, all the way up to Code S, are performing the leveling. Some even claim that the player (who may be featured on TL), will stream the leveling for an extra fee. The levelers are never named, of course, and sometimes there are even disclaimers that the services will not be offered for long because the players could lose their jobs if caught by their teams.
The proof that this is happening is not hard to find. The most blatant example that I know of is MillDragon, who has been leveling accounts on stream. Here's a VOD of it - http://www.twitch.tv/dragon/b/324831636. Starting at ~58:00 he starts leveling silver account FX.Shidow for several games. Other pros that have been confirmed to do it are Destiny, Desrow, and Select (although it seems Select only did it for a short while and then stopped).
I've also found an example of a GM account that is being leveled by Naama:
+ Show Spoiler + It's rank 169 on NA (at the time of posting) IMMvp. Here's why I think this account is leveled by Naama: 1. The 1v1 player's hotkey patterns match exactly to Naama. The team game player's hotkeys are completely different, as is his skill level (far inferior). See below. 2. The owner of the account denies that it's leveled, and claims he simply uses different hotkeys for 1v1 and team games (see here; the "skrillex123" account is his as he admits earlier in that thread). Clearly he wants people to think he himself is good enough to be in GM, which is likely the reason people pay for leveling services. Otherwise, why wouldn't he just admit that he shares the account with Naama? 3. Given that the 1v1 player is irrefutably Naama, the only other possibility is that this is Naama's friend and they just share the account. Obviously, this is hypothetically possible and certainly not unprecedented; daisuki, for example, has admitted that he shares the NITRIX NA accounts with people who play the team games. But, what are the odds? Does Naama have a friend in the US that he just decided to ask to use his account to smurf on? Why wouldn't Naama have his own smurf account(s) in NA, possibly paid for by one of his former teams? 4. It's likely not the account owner just playing much better in 1v1s. As of season 6, the account was in silver in 1v1. The team game player's skill level, if you watch the replays below, is indeed silver or gold level. In season 7, the account jumped to top master, and of course now is GM. 5. Now for the hotkey graphs. Naama's hotkeys, pulled from drop.sc replays against Naniwa and Dimaga:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/d7qhn.jpg?1) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/pGwuN.jpg?1) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/iaDQZ.jpg?1) IMMvp's 1v1 hotkeys:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/md2tJ.jpg?1) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/18Sbd.jpg?1) IMMvp's team game hotkeys:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/XrNQr.jpg?1) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/sOmis.jpg?1) I also believe the owner of the account hacks in his team games and plays with other hackers, which leads to another problem with these leveling services. But I'll get back to that later.
The following are quotes taken from threads/websites created for leveling services. Each of these is from a different group offering the service:
+ Show Spoiler +"We have 2 of the finest Top 30 Grand Master Zerg Players to provide professional coaching and league/ranking services." "We have 2 of the best Grand Master Terrans. Both provide professional coaching and league/ranking services."
"We have already gotten quite a few customers in Grand Masters league in the past 3 months on the North American, European and South East Asian servers."
"We currently have top tier pro players of each race for account leveling!" "Up to TOP 16 GRANDMASTERS LEVELING!"
"All 1v1 orders are processed by highly experienced Grand Master players from Europe and North American servers."
"We have 3 Korean GM players each race."
"Our leveling service consists of some of the highest skilled players in the world, consistently top 16 GM on KOREA/NA/EU servers." Another ad for this service on another site states "1 of the players is a Korean GM Protoss, he is widely known in the starcraft 2 community and has a featured stream on Team Liquid"
"I have 1 top GM protoss and 1 top GM zerg. They both keep above a 65% win ratio in GM." As of 7/12/12 - "The service is re-opened, come one come all." "If the wrong person found out about this they could lose their job as professional gamer." These two players are going through a established hacker and site donor. Him speaking about an upcoming patch - "There is no set time for this patch to be released just that it is under development right now so get ready to update those hack/bot folders."
"The leveling will be done by a top 50 grandmasters zerg, top 25 grandmasters protoss and a top korean terran." Note he says "Hey I'm sure alot you guys have seen my free leveling thread, but I realized its not really realistic because of the amount of people that want leveling." He states he uses a maphack for the leveling he does personally.
Who cares?
Now you might say, what's the big deal? After all, account leveling is not actually hurting anyone other than the person buying the leveling, because he won't really be able to play 1v1 again or else he'd get stomped. Besides, progamers need a little extra income. However I do think this is a "big deal", for the following reasons:
1. Need for money never excuses a wrong. Coaching would be a better avenue.
2. It hurts the competitive integrity of the ladder. Like it or not, the ladder does have meaning to the community at large. Similar to how hacking hurts the ladder's competitive integrity by providing hackers with an unfair advantage, account levelers have an unfair advantage over the vast majority of their opponents because the levelers' skill level is far above the league they're playing games in. Thus, whenever you play against a pro who's leveling an account, that game is just as meaningless to you competitively as if you were playing against a hacker. The ladder player base is already dwindling, we don't need people being under the impression that in any given game, they may well be playing against an account leveler or hacker. Lots of players are discouraged by lack of ladder progress, so we also don't need master league filled with leveled accounts.
3. It's against the EULA and the TOU. 2(B) of the TOU states:
"You agree that you will not, under any circumstances exploit the Service, a Game or any part thereof for any commercial purpose, including without limitation...perform in-game services in exchange for payment outside the Game, e.g., power-leveling."
You might argue that coaching would seem to fall under this part of the TOU. I would say it's reasonable for Blizzard to look past coaching since it will only benefit the community and the competitive integrity of the ladder. Blizzard also looks past things like relocalizers that allow people to switch between regions, but do modify game files if I'm not mistaken, because they can only benefit the community.
4. It IS hurting other people. The semi-pros in high master who are struggling to break into GM, because GM does in fact provide recognition to players. Granted, it's not the same level of recognition that tournament success grants, but it undeniably beneficial to a player to get into GM. Indeed, many aspiring semi-pro teams have ladder rank cut-offs for entry. Ideally GM should be the top 200 ladder players, and not littered with leveled accounts. Aspiring semi-pros are being cheated out of potential opportunities by the people selling these leveling services. Moreover, these leveled accounts basically go inactive save for some occasional playing by the leveler to keep the account from falling out of GM. The levelers also offer "maintaining services" to keep you in GM.
5. The people most likely to buy leveling services are associated with hacking and botting communities. Indeed, many of the ads I mentioned are on hacking sites. Often you will see the same group advertising on multiple hacking sites. As an example of a hacker's account being leveled, I believe the IMMvp account owner hacks in team games and plays with other hackers. Replay evidence here:
+ Show Spoiler +http://www.sctemple.com/replay/260581/ - His team is ready and waiting for the attack that comes at 9:30. - karaNICOLE looks through the fog of war at my drop at 16:50, and then Mvp is ready and waiting at his expansion and even moves SCVs away pre-emptively. - One of his teammates here, FFSentries, has an account on a prominent hacking site where he asks for SC2 loss bots (revealed by Google search). http://www.sctemple.com/replay/260996/ (very damning evidence here for IMMvp) - Suspicious fog of war peaking by "skrillex", which the website can see is his the account's former name, @ ~2:30-3:30, 8:00-8:15 (VERY suspect, including looking @ hidden expo), 10:30-10:35, 15:13,
Do we really want pros giving legitimacy to the accounts of people who hack?
6. The people buying these services may even advertise coaching once they get into GM and make money off it. NMxBlazinT, for example, is notorious for having his account leveled each season, and he has an account on a prominent hacking site where he has advertised coaching.
9/24/12 UPDATE: The VeraLynn issue posted by KawaiiRice is further proof that a leveled account can be used as a facade to profit from other things such as coaching. This isn't necessarily small potatoes either considering this person was a representative of SixPoolGaming.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=371282
7. It's possible that the people acting as middlemen between the pros performing leveling and the people buying the leveling keep a portion of the proceeds, similar to something like Gosucoaching. If this is the case, the proceeds are likely contributing towards the hacking communities and sustaining them further. The middlemen who offer their services on the most prominent hacking site are veterans of the site and in some cases "Advanced Hackers" and site donors. These people contribute money and add to the knowledge base of the site with their programming expertise (as demonstrated by their post history). I'm not linking to direct sources since I don't think TL allows any linking to hacking sites.
In addition, the leveling threads on hacking websites draw traffic and thus ad revenue to those sites. By adding leveling to the list of services offered at these sites, progamers are bolstering those sites' communities and potentially putting more money in hack creators' pockets. This can only be a bad thing because it encourages the hack creators to continue doing what they're doing, and potentially expand what they're doing.
In sum, I think this is a legitimate problem that needs addressing. I hope I have provided enough proof that it's happening. I don't intend to merely tarnish the names of the pros I mentioned, but I do think they should be criticized for this practice. Also, the example of Naama shows that by comparing hotkey graphs from sc2gears we can potentially identify other leveled accounts. I think this kind of thing is just as reprehensible as hacking and it should be put to an end.
Last edit: 2012-09-25 07:01:32 |
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 VPCursed July 16 2012 16:32. Posts 1038 | Profile Blog # |
| Pro's need $ and in e-sports their isn't enough going around unless you're a top contender in tourneys.. hell.. i've seen forgg stream him self account leveling and chat with the person he was doing it for... Don't think its that bad of a thing tbh Last edit: 2012-07-16 16:32:59 |
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| ShakaZu.Sc2 United States. July 16 2012 16:35. Posts 131 | Profile # |
| Well done sir, you did your research and i commend you but I don't think this should be a big deal, sad truth is most "progamers" are very poor hoping for that one big performance to get stream viewers, sponsorships or big teams. Naama probably wasn't making very much from AL so needed to supplement his income and someone on NA probably sent him a pm and offered good money |
| | Check out my stream at http://www.twitch.tv/shakazu and follow me on twitter https://twitter.com/ShakaZuSC2 |
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| alderamin July 16 2012 16:36. Posts 80 | Profile # |
It is ladder abuse and thus cheating. In the past the community has tried to ban people who ladder abuse and cheat from all tournaments for a period of time..
And Kespa even banned people for life. Of course Blizzard will ban those accounts too.Last edit: 2012-07-16 16:37:12 |
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| Tyree July 16 2012 16:38. Posts 1508 | Profile # |
The bigger issue is that "pros" have to resort to this, it can only mean that they arent making enough money except perhaps the top 1% of the pros, mostly koreans.
There is no point in even addressing that average Joes are actually doing this, the matchmaking and ranking systems are meant to help you, to find equally skilled players so that you can have...you know...fun? Why did you even purchase game to begin with?
I guess bragging rights that you are in GM mean more to some people than the actual game |
| | ★ Top Gun ★ |  |
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| thrawn2112 United States. July 16 2012 16:38. Posts 3599 | Profile Blog # |
| is it against the sc2 EULA? other than that i dont think anyone has any grounds to do anything about it, and i doubt i care anyways |
| | "People think they know all these things about other people, and if you ask them why they think they know that, it'd be hard for them to be convincing." ES |
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| IntoTheheart Canada. July 16 2012 16:39. Posts 2728 | Profile Blog # |
How does this work exactly?
So I give my account to fOrGG who will boost my account to GM, at which point I'll lose a ton of games (because I'm personally NOT at Korea GM level) and then eventually lose my spot right? |
| | When a ghost kill someone with their gauss rifle, are they performing gaussian elimination then? - Arnstein |  |
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| Tachion July 16 2012 16:40. Posts 6978 | Profile # |
| I'm sorry for skimping around the main issue, but what compels people to pay for this in the first place? So they can brag to ignorant friends about how good they are? |
| | i was driving down the road this november eve and spotted a hitchiker walking down the street. i pulled over and saw that it was only a tree. i uprooted it and put it in my trunk. do trees like marshmallow peeps? cause that's all i have and will have. |  |
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| IntoTheheart Canada. July 16 2012 16:41. Posts 2728 | Profile Blog # |
On July 16 2012 16:40 Tachion wrote:
I'm sorry for skimping around the main issue, but what compels people to pay for this in the first place? So they can brag to ignorant friends about how good they are?
It seems like it's the only advantage since those GM accounts won't stay at GM level for very long right? |
| | When a ghost kill someone with their gauss rifle, are they performing gaussian elimination then? - Arnstein | |
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| Le BucheRON Canada. July 16 2012 16:41. Posts 615 | Profile # |
| having someone level your account is just sad. Stupid and sad. That's all. No big deal. |
| | Guess who`s special?! |  |
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| S2Lunar July 16 2012 16:42. Posts 1016 | Profile # |
this thread isn't about the general issue of progamers leveling accounts (which doesn't bother me anyways), it's about a Naama witch hunt, i'm sure there are many pros leveling accounts and you don't have to single out naama.
I know Kalin specifically (formerly blast) has leveled alot of accounts to GM and tons upon tons to masters on a website that I won't link here.Last edit: 2012-07-16 16:43:28 |
| | Life/JD/Stephano/Squirtle/RorO-- 1800 point Master Terran twitch.tv/s2lunar | |
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| Antares_ Poland. July 16 2012 16:44. Posts 263 | Profile # |
I think it's nothing we should even care about. Pro gamers need money, because they are not paid very well (unless they are top-tier like Huk, NesTea etc. ). And if they can make some additional $ on some kids that think that their e-pen** will grow because they have GM on their account then it's good for the scene (players have money = they can play) and it doesn't really affect anyone else, except for a few unlucky guys who lost 10 ladder points.
Nice for you to get that data and show it. But really, didn't we know that such things happen already? On Polish official fansite forums you can find pro gamers offering "account power leveling". In my opinion you just wasted time to prove something that was a known fact already.
Hope there won't be any witch hunt or drama because of this thread. It would do nothing but hurt e-sports  |
| | If you make no mistake, yet still lose - you don't understand the game. Spiral out, keep going and follow me @ twitter.com/AntaresSC |  |
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| Talin Montenegro. July 16 2012 16:44. Posts 8189 | Profile Blog # |
On July 16 2012 16:39 IntoTheheart wrote:
How does this work exactly?
So I give my account to fOrGG who will boost my account to GM, at which point I'll lose a ton of games (because I'm personally NOT at Korea GM level) and then eventually lose my spot right?
Or you can just not play at all and show off your fancy GM icon for the rest of the season and put something like "GM Terran NA" in your TL sig, which I believe is the incentive for most of these people, rather than actually wanting to play in GM.Last edit: 2012-07-16 16:45:45 |
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| alderamin July 16 2012 16:46. Posts 80 | Profile # |
On July 16 2012 16:44 Antares_ wrote:I think it's nothing we should even care about. Pro gamers need money, because they are not paid very well (unless they are top-tier like Huk, NesTea etc. ). And if they can make some additional $ on some kids that think that their e-pen** will grow because they have GM on their account then it's good for the scene (players have money = they can play) and it doesn't really affect anyone else, except for a few unlucky guys who lost 10 ladder points. Nice for you to get that data and show it. But really, didn't we know that such things happen already? On Polish official fansite forums you can find pro gamers offering "account power leveling". In my opinion you just wasted time to prove something that was a known fact already. Hope there won't be any witch hunt or drama because of this thread. It would do nothing but hurt e-sports
How can we harshly ban some people for some forms of cheating but not othes for other forms of cheating? |
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| DYEAlabaster Canada. July 16 2012 16:47. Posts 992 | Profile Blog # |
Idiots supplementing pro gamer's meagre income? Sounds like a good thing to me...
Sidenote- why could players lose their jobs? Someone mentioned forGG streamed it... while he was teamless?Last edit: 2012-07-16 16:52:07 |
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| Kaitlin United States. July 16 2012 16:49. Posts 2201 | Profile # |
| I'm curious to see what some people who consider themselves "pro-gamers" have to say about it. IMO, it doesn't not reflect favorably on the "pro-gamer". |
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| Michaels July 16 2012 16:49. Posts 390 | Profile # |
| Not a problem at all if u ask me. I hope mods will close this before it becomes another witchhunt, or someone wanna more hits? Last edit: 2012-07-16 16:50:38 |
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| TheLOLas United States. July 16 2012 16:50. Posts 645 | Profile Blog # |
| I honestly don't see anything wrong with leveling accounts other than the fact that it takes up a limited number of spots in GM. For every league below that, it's not an issue. If a player is only qualified for Diamond league and is leveled into Masters, they will not be succesful in that league. They will lose a ton of matches until the leveler levels them back up. This person will just lose a bunch and never actually be to the level required for those advanced leagues until they practice and get good enough to place in them. It is a little anoyying to level people into GM because there is a limited number of spots, however I expect those people to drop out quickly and they will be replaced with more qualified players. |
| | Yes. I am the Doctor Pepper Kid! UGH Fighting! ||||| "I'm Beautiful, why would I give a fuck?" -Day [9] ||| I ♥ Rachel |  |
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| Infernal_dream United States. July 16 2012 16:50. Posts 1600 | Profile # |
On July 16 2012 16:44 Talin wrote:
Show nested quote +On July 16 2012 16:39 IntoTheheart wrote:
How does this work exactly?
So I give my account to fOrGG who will boost my account to GM, at which point I'll lose a ton of games (because I'm personally NOT at Korea GM level) and then eventually lose my spot right?
Or you can just not play at all and show off your fancy GM icon for the rest of the season and put something like "GM Terran NA" in your TL sig, which I believe is the incentive for most of these people, rather than actually wanting to play in GM.
And then when they look at your 1v1 history, or ask to play a game against you? Let the lawlz commence. I honestly don't care. I think it's sad that pro gamers have to do this shit for money, but blame the esports scene for being greedy. |
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| Megaliskuu United States. July 16 2012 16:50. Posts 5018 | Profile Blog # |
| Don't see how this is a big deal at all, let the morons get their account leveled, most pros arent paid very well..they need to make money somehow right? |
| | aka Megalisk, TheMuTaL|BW>Everything|Add me on KR TheMuTaL.675 for practice games :) |  |
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