bookrebus Chapter 221 The Helplessness of Game Players
Chapter 221 The Helplessness of Game Players
December 16, 12 PM, Seattle.
Jim Olson's computer screen displayed three windows: on the left was a live feed of StarCraft forum posts, in the middle was a graph showing the number of online players on Battle.net, and on the right was an encrypted email.
The graph shows that the peak number of concurrent users on Battle.net dropped from 83,000 yesterday afternoon to 51,000 at this moment, and is still slowly declining. The proportion of negative posts on the forum exceeds 70%.
The encrypted email came from JR and contained only one line: "The seed has been sown and is sprouting. Phase one complete."
Jim closed the email and cleared the cache. He picked up the intercom and dialed Ballmer.
"Steve, the data is starting to reflect."
"I saw it." Ballmer's voice sounded calm. "Battle.net online traffic dropped by 30%. The forums are full of complaints."
Blizzard must be in a real bind.
What did they do?
"They issued an announcement warning players that their accounts would be banned. But technically, the cheats exploit memory modification, making it difficult to completely defend against them from the client side. Unless they rewrite part of the game code or add a powerful anti-cheat system—that will take time."
"How long will that take?"
"At least a few weeks. And the anti-cheat system impacts performance, which players will complain about."
Ballmer paused for a few seconds: "Continue to observe. Do not make any moves."
"clear."
After hanging up the phone, Jim refreshed the forum. A new post was bumped to the front page:
[Heartbroken] I uninstalled the game. I'll come back when my environment is better.
The poster said he played ten games and encountered cheaters in seven of them. Reporting them was useless; Blizzard couldn't ban them all. He decided to temporarily quit the game.
The comments section below the post was filled with "+1", "Refund too", and "Wait for Blizzard to fix the problem".
Jim closed the forum, opened Excel, and began organizing the data. He wanted to create charts showing the trends in online users, forum sentiment, and media coverage for the next meeting.
He wrote a simple formula to predict the number of online users a week from now, based on the current rate of decline.
Prediction: It may fall below 30,000.
He saved the file, named "Project_Garden_Report_1216".
October 12, Wednesday.
John Carter has used cheats in ten games and won all ten.
He initially felt a bit guilty, but after winning two games, the overwhelming pleasure of victory overwhelmed his guilt. Especially when facing opponents with higher Battle.net ratings who used to dominate him, he could now easily turn the tables.
He learned to control his usage: not to add too many resources, just a little to ensure an economic advantage; not to activate invincibility, but only to occasionally use full vision to check the opponent's movements, so that he would not be easily detected.
He joined a newly created chat channel called "Toolbox". There were dozens of people in the channel, all exchanging tips on using cheats.
"Don't activate invincibility; it'll be too obvious. Just activate resource mode, a little bit more, and the enemy won't notice."
"Keep your field of vision open, but don't make it too obvious. Pretend you're doing a good job of reconnaissance."
"Use the automatic micro-operation function with caution; the movements are too perfect, it's not human."
John looked at the chat on the screen and typed, "Where did this cheat come from? The email said it was a Blizzard patch, but it's clearly not."
One person replied: "Who knows, as long as it works. Blizzard's anti-cheat measures are inadequate, so whose fault is it?"
Another person said, "I heard that there are more cheats for the Starry Sky system because the system is open source and vulnerabilities are easy to find."
"And yet they still boast about the security of their system?"
"Safety my ass."
John closed the chat channel, ready to start another game. He was matched with a player whose ID was "HonorPlayer".
As soon as I entered the game, the other person typed in the chat: "If you're using cheats, please tell me directly and I'll quit. I don't want to waste my time."
John's fingers hovered over the keyboard. He typed a few words, then deleted them. His final reply was: "No need."
The game begins. John, as usual, secretly added 500 crystals. He started normally, but his economy was a little faster than the others.
In the fifth minute, the other person suddenly said in the chat box: "You have too many crystals."
John's heart skipped a beat, and he replied, "?"
"You started at the same time as me, but now you have a second barracks. I've calculated that you don't have enough minerals," HonorPlayer said. "Either you're mining twice as efficiently as me, or you're cheating."
John didn't reply; he continued operating the machine.
The other player typed "GG" and quit the game.
John then received a private message: "Is it fun to win by cheating? You're just fooling yourself."
John stared at the private message for a long time before closing the game.
He opened the forum and saw many more posts from people quitting. There was also a post that compiled a "list of known cheat functions," listing more than a dozen, some of which John had never even heard of.
The post concluded, "At this rate, Battle.net will be awash with cheaters within a month. Regular players will either use cheats, get wrecked, or quit."
John shut down his computer and left the study. The TV was on in the living room, showing the news. He sat on the sofa, his mind still preoccupied with the game he'd just played and the private message.
The phone rang. It was his friend Mark, who also played StarCraft.
"John, have you checked the forums? They're all over the place."
"I've seen it."
"Are you still playing?"
"Just finished a game."
"Did you encounter any cheaters?"
"……No."
John lied. He didn't know why he lied.
"I encountered this," Mark said. "Two games. In the first game, the enemy marines were invincible, and in the second game, they had full map vision from the start. I just quit. I'm not playing anymore; I'll wait for Blizzard to fix it."
"How long will the repair take?"
"Who knows. Maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months. Anyway, I'm not going to play any more games lately."
After hanging up the phone, John returned to his study. He opened the game and logged into his account. Of his twenty-odd friends, only three were online—usually at this time, there would be at least fifteen.
He double-clicked one of the online players and invited them to a match.
The other party immediately rejected the request, replying with a message: "Take a few days off, the environment is too bad."
John quit the game and stared at the StarCraft icon on his desktop. The Ultralisk on the icon was baring its fangs and claws.
He right-clicked and selected "Uninstall".