Actually I think this works slightly better for cheating-ish. If the fog of war hid units from you then when being attacked from an attacker you couldn't see the client would just have to "trust" that the information is legitimate. I could see this leading to a cheat that would phantom up attacks from areas the defending player couldn't see since it has no way to verify that the units are really there. If it can verify then the cheats we have now would work just as well.

That information could be revealed at the end of the game for verification (i.e. for you to see in the replay, if you or any anti-cheat algorithms suspected cheating). It doesn't need to be sent during the game, and certainly shouldn't be sent in order to avoid these maphacks or whatever they're called.

I really expected better from Starcraft 2's anti-cheating measures. If the software is designed so that you always need to receive all the data, sooner or later there can be undetectable map hacks, which are among the worst kinds of cheating.

You expected strong anti-cheating measures from Blizzard? Thats like expecting an egg from a cow. If you get drunk enough some clever slight of hand can certainly trick you into thinking it happened, but everyone knows the truth. Pretty much everyone of their games is hack ridden. Not to say it isn't a valid complaint, but it is certainly not something to expect.

All multiplayer PC games get hacked. That's part of PC gaming. What people like about Blizzard is that they at least try to fix exploits and they love using the ban hammer. I remember back in like 2004 or 2005 they banned about 100k WC3 accounts in one day.

They also ban tons of accounts in WoW, and even strip players of arena titles if they get caught cheating the ladder system in any way.

I expected better because of their experience in multiplayer games and because they're launching a new version of a game that game out like 15 years ago. Not a dealbreaker in any way, but still a bit disappointing.

@FunTime: I'm not talking about fixing exploits, this is something that would be addressed during the design phase of the game... i.e. the designers sit down and say "let's design SC2's network protocols in a way that doesn't allow map hacks". You don't need to know much about programming to realize that it's definitely possible to design it in that way.

Agreed, they could possibly do a bit more during the developement stage, but all in all, Blizzard is harder on cheaters than any other PC game developer out there.

And you know what? I'm betting that there is a reason they don't make it impossible to cheat in the first place. Blizzard is too well run and has too many resources to not have a method behind their madness. They probably love being able to ban accounts so that the cheaters have to go out and spend $50 on a new copy of the game, and I'm fairly certain that anyone who is so into a game that they will cheat to get ahead will definitely buy a new copy if they get banned.

Not saying that it's good for us gamers that they do this, but it's good for business, and they are a business at the end of the day.

Their experience is to have the game riddled with hacks though. I am not trying to really rake you over the coals for this one though. Their track record is inexcusable, but consistent. I harp on it so that when Diablo 3 releases you expect to see people with all those hacks rather than be surprised.

 It certainly is possible to create a network protocol that is maphack immune, but at what cost? Speed is critical in the game. Extra layers of security will add more to latency which pisses off players as well. It is a trade off in terms of end user enjoyment. How big a trade off is a mystery neither you nor I could hope to solve but there would be some cost.

@Funtime
I admit they comedown harshly on the cheaters which works for them I guess. The game design theory would seem to be make sure everyone who plays it has the best possible experience while trying to leave as little room to cheat as they can manage. Thus you get a lot of exploits that could be closed at the cost of performance for everyone, but permanently remove those that use them to degrade the experience of specific people.

I'm so sick of this... every time I play 1vs1, I lose to a rush from a guy who has a "slightly favored" status... can't we play with the same rules??

worst is this time, I had barely the time to build a zergling pool and a queen that I already had 5 protos in my base... I barely even got enough money to build 5 protos myself....

there's something that I must be missing in the way to play this game, cause when I look at the time log I'm usually ahead of the others in the first 2 mins :x

As someone with some programming experience, I would say there is effecrively no overhead to just not transmitting that information until it was needed. But it would need to be put in from the beginning. They should have done it.

Computer A would just have to ask B: "This is my vision range. Please send data for all your unit positions that might affect me." So a maphack would reveal a few screen-inches outside the legit vision range, not all of the map. This is negligible compared to the traffic for requests like "Can this unit see/shoot your unit?" times 200 times 200 = 40000 (obviously with significant optimisation it won't be that many, but still).

If you're getting hit with 5 zealots before you get your spawning pool down then you're using a terrible build order, and should watch some pro replays or read some strategy guides. Zerg can usually give Protoss fits with quick zerglings because you can get them out so fast and if the Toss isn't careful, run them right past his zealot and into his supply line.