Blizzard Entertainment has always taken active measures to combat cheating in our games, and that's of particular importance for a highly competitive game like StarCraft II. If a StarCraft II player is found to be cheating or using hacks or modifications in any form, then that player can be permanently banned from the game, as outlined in our end user license agreement. This means that the player will be permanently unable to log in to Battle.net to play StarCraft II with his or her account.

Blizzard combats cheaters in a variety of ways. The first, and most important of these is through the in-game reporting system. In the Score Screen, you’ll see that you can select a player’s name to open a drop-down menu. By selecting ‘More…’, and then ‘Report Player’, you will open a window. You can then select the option ‘Cheating’, and provide a description about what specifically aroused your suspicion. Including links to any relevant replays is also highly encouraged. Our hacks team is constantly monitoring these in-game reports, and will launch investigations on players who draw a lot of attention.

Another effective way of reporting is to simply send us a replay of the game in which you played against a suspected cheater. You can do this by e-mailing hacks@blizzard.com and either attaching, or providing a URL link to, a replay file. The replay will then be investigated by our hacks team.

We also employ software detection methods to discover hack program usage. While we can't go into much detail about these methods, we can say that players caught cheating in this way are generally banned in waves. This is done so as to not tip off program developers regarding our detection methods, as well as to maximize the return on our detection efforts. Ban waves are issued in contrast to the other methods mentioned above, where bans are issued on an individual, account-by-account basis.

Through these means, any player who is determined to be in violation of our terms and conditions by using hacks, cheats, mods, or any other unauthorized third-party software will be banned.

We’d like to thank our players for constantly practicing and promoting a healthy competitive environment. Working with our community to ensure a fair and level playing field is important to Blizzard. As players ourselves, we investigate all reports of cheating as thoroughly as possible and take action when appropriate. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them in the thread below and we will answer them as possible!

See you on the battlefields!