For those who are unaware, the player Nationalistic has been permanently banned from Loka after it was discovered he was using a hack client. We've been investigating this for about a week now after receiving multiple reports about Nationalistic's behaviour in Proving Grounds. During this week we've been compiling evidence which we will present to you all now for transparency.
On October 14th the admin team received videos showing Nationalistic with suspicious levels of reach. After viewing them we agreed they looked fishy, but lacked any amount of hard evidence to pursue it further.
On October 19th we were sent a video from the player Unallowed's perspective, showing Nationalistic aggro pearling onto an invisible and unmoving Unallowed. You can watch the video yourself here.
Particles in Minecraft render up to 32 blocks away, which is shown in this series of images. Admins went to the video's location in game and reenacted what happened.
Because particles in Minecraft have a render limit of 32 blocks, it was impossible for Nationalistic to be able to see Unallowed's particles. A hack client, however, would easily allow someone to see an invisible player far outside their particle render range. Here is what that would look like. Now with hard, data-backed evidence of potential cheating we felt pursuing the matter further was warranted.
Today, October 20th, during the Balak fight bat3415 warped to the fight invisible and immediately removed his armour. He proceeded to scale a cliff far away from the fighting and sat there recording. Nationalistic took notice of him and stared directly at bat who was far outside Nationalistic's particle render range. Even though Nationalistic clearly knew bat was there, he did not pursue him which we can only assume was because even he knew that would be too blatant. You can watch this video from bat's perspective here. Towards the end of the fight Skuhoo also went fully invisible and sat on a cliff far away from the fighting. A solid 2 minutes later Nationalistic walked straight up to him and attacked, but unfortunately nobody who was watching was recording.
Feeling we had far more than a sufficient amount of evidence to screenshare, we proceeded to freeze Nationalistic immediately after the fight ended. After being told explicitly not to log out he disconnected from the server for a few seconds before returning, claiming he was disconnected. This isn't surprising and we fully believe Nationalistic here. A ghost client is a type of hack client that works by injecting code into a running instance of Minecraft so as to leave no trace. Virtually all ghost clients also come with a feature known as "self-destruct" where the client's code is removed from the running instance. Due to its nature these often cause players, particularly those with mediocre PCs, to disconnect from servers since the game essentially freezes for a few seconds, causing packets to not be sent to the server.
Ignoring this setback, we proceeded with the screenshare and found a file called "hwid.exe" in Nationalistic's downloads folder. This is a program that generates a unique ID based on your computer's hardware. Nationalistic claimed that this file is remnants of when he used to use the client-side anticheat known as "CheatBreaker". CheatBreaker does require you to enter your hardware ID, but the file was downloaded 2 days ago and last run today. It also happens to be the exact program distributed by the ghost client known as "Vape" for authentication purposes. On a side note, Vape also requires the user to be running Forge, which Nationalistic was indeed using. What's interesting, though, is that he was also using Forge with Optifine as his only mod.
The hwid file, supplemented by him disconnecting and the video evidence, is proof that Nationalistic was indeed using Vape and as a result, has been permanently banned from Loka. Hacking detracts from everyone's experience and will absolutely not be tolerated. We advise everyone to self-police and continue reporting suspicious behaviour.
On October 14th the admin team received videos showing Nationalistic with suspicious levels of reach. After viewing them we agreed they looked fishy, but lacked any amount of hard evidence to pursue it further.
On October 19th we were sent a video from the player Unallowed's perspective, showing Nationalistic aggro pearling onto an invisible and unmoving Unallowed. You can watch the video yourself here.
Particles in Minecraft render up to 32 blocks away, which is shown in this series of images. Admins went to the video's location in game and reenacted what happened.
Because particles in Minecraft have a render limit of 32 blocks, it was impossible for Nationalistic to be able to see Unallowed's particles. A hack client, however, would easily allow someone to see an invisible player far outside their particle render range. Here is what that would look like. Now with hard, data-backed evidence of potential cheating we felt pursuing the matter further was warranted.
Today, October 20th, during the Balak fight bat3415 warped to the fight invisible and immediately removed his armour. He proceeded to scale a cliff far away from the fighting and sat there recording. Nationalistic took notice of him and stared directly at bat who was far outside Nationalistic's particle render range. Even though Nationalistic clearly knew bat was there, he did not pursue him which we can only assume was because even he knew that would be too blatant. You can watch this video from bat's perspective here. Towards the end of the fight Skuhoo also went fully invisible and sat on a cliff far away from the fighting. A solid 2 minutes later Nationalistic walked straight up to him and attacked, but unfortunately nobody who was watching was recording.
Feeling we had far more than a sufficient amount of evidence to screenshare, we proceeded to freeze Nationalistic immediately after the fight ended. After being told explicitly not to log out he disconnected from the server for a few seconds before returning, claiming he was disconnected. This isn't surprising and we fully believe Nationalistic here. A ghost client is a type of hack client that works by injecting code into a running instance of Minecraft so as to leave no trace. Virtually all ghost clients also come with a feature known as "self-destruct" where the client's code is removed from the running instance. Due to its nature these often cause players, particularly those with mediocre PCs, to disconnect from servers since the game essentially freezes for a few seconds, causing packets to not be sent to the server.
Ignoring this setback, we proceeded with the screenshare and found a file called "hwid.exe" in Nationalistic's downloads folder. This is a program that generates a unique ID based on your computer's hardware. Nationalistic claimed that this file is remnants of when he used to use the client-side anticheat known as "CheatBreaker". CheatBreaker does require you to enter your hardware ID, but the file was downloaded 2 days ago and last run today. It also happens to be the exact program distributed by the ghost client known as "Vape" for authentication purposes. On a side note, Vape also requires the user to be running Forge, which Nationalistic was indeed using. What's interesting, though, is that he was also using Forge with Optifine as his only mod.
The hwid file, supplemented by him disconnecting and the video evidence, is proof that Nationalistic was indeed using Vape and as a result, has been permanently banned from Loka. Hacking detracts from everyone's experience and will absolutely not be tolerated. We advise everyone to self-police and continue reporting suspicious behaviour.
