On May 24, 2016, the world saw the video game Overwatch, a first-person team shooter with specialization classes. In multiplayer mode, two opposing teams save the world: they escort an object moving at a speed of 10 centimeters per second or run along control points. Players fight heroes who have different abilities, characters and background.

Easy to see one of the possible sources of inspiration. Someone screamed that Blizzard “licked off” Team Fortress 2 - the game of 2007, which still lives and continues to receive content updates. Someone was more worried about the design of female characters. The game received high marks from critics and a huge user base. In the open beta, nearly ten million people played . In the first week, the game gathered seven million players, by August there were 15 million , in October the mark of 20 million was passed .

In some places, the game spread with differences caused by how video games are consumed in a particular country. Here we will talk about cheating, Korea and the culture of the country's Internet cafes.

How to play in Korea

Some people were “lucky” to catch the era when they could only access the Internet and play together at an Internet cafe. With the proliferation of modem, broadband, and then wireless access, such establishments gradually disappeared. Today, with a strong desire to save up for your own gaming computer, even a schoolboy who earns money in the summer can. Many in their pocket have a smartphone, where access to the network is always there. In South Korea, the connection quality factor has been strengthened several times - the country consistently ranks first in the connection speed ratings. So why do Koreans still go to Internet cafes?
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Many Koreans live with their parents before the wedding. This means that teenagers and young people aged 20-30 years (and sometimes a little older) are forced to share the cramped conditions of the personal space of tiny Korean kvartirok with their sometimes oriental strict parents. Those parents who look with disapproval at the child relaxing in League of Legends.

If we are talking about a child of school age, then he can’t have free time at all - after school, Korean children go to so-called Hagwona , extracurricular, supplementary education courses, and they work until night. If you manage to make time, young gamers run into the so-called PC bang (in the literal translation - "PC-room"), where they get the opportunity to socialize with their own kind.

This place looks like a room with tables, chairs, computers. The hardware is not the most flawed and with ease, but no-frills launches the latest "mid-range" multiplayer games. Here is a typical PC bang computer gaming portrait according to the Korean Gametrics monitoring site :

• Processor : Intel Core i5-2500.
• RAM : 8 GB.
• Video card : Nvidia GeForce GTX 960.
• Hard disk : 0.5-1 TB.

Frequent monitors on 25-30 inches diagonal, high-quality office chairs, sometimes there are solid-state drives. Of course, every computer has a decent Internet channel. At the same time, the cost of renting a gaming place is about $ 0.5-1.5 per hour. For a fee, visitors can order food - usually chips, quick snacks and soft drinks.


Comedian Conan O'Brien wonders at the traditions of PC bang from the position of a typical American man in the street.

The number of such Internet cafes is slowly decreasing , but still many Koreans are playing PC bang. When entering the Asian markets, gaming companies have to make allowances for such establishments and give their visitors special conditions. For example, in the regular version of League of Legends, the player gradually opens new heroes; In the version for Internet cafes, they are open initially.

LoL is not the only popular entertainment in South Korean Internet cafes. In terms of prevalence, Overwatch competes with him, at some point the game from Blizzard even surpassed Riot Games product in popularity. Today, Overwatch and League of Legends have about a quarter of the rating.

The latter may surprise: one game has conquered the market for six years, another appeared by the beginning of last summer. Deal in special bonuses: any Korean with an account in Battle.net can play Overwatch with Origins Edition skins for free from an Internet cafe. The rest of the world pays ≈ $ 60 for such a copy of the game. Obviously, if many go to PC bang to play free Overwatch, then the statistics will move. LoL is shareware both at home and in a game cafe.

Cheating problem

So, for the player from the gaming cafe, the ban is not terrible - if they block the current account, it is enough to change the IP to a foreign one (there is protection in Korean Battle.net - you need to confirm the phone number or enter i-Pin , both are bound to Resident registration number ) and register a new one account without any financial loss to buy a new copy of the game. On computers in PC bang there is the necessary access to install and run third-party software. Therefore, an explanation of the scale of cheating on Korean Overwatch servers can not even begin.

Blizzard is placing e-sports hopes on Overwatch. The game has a rating system and competitive matches. Often, top Korean players are cheaters - they are banned right during competitions or streams. Cheaters can play in groups. Sometimes the outcome of the match determines which team has the most players with the aimbot.


Of course, Blizzard regularly bans cheaters. But bad luck: the outcome of previous matches is not canceled. Multi-player collusion is possible: one-time accounts and main white accounts are collected in one team. Due to the use of cheats from one-time accounts, unfair victory is achieved, and real profiles pump their rating. Such a scheme would not have been able to turn in, say, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, where the results of the cheaters are reset to all participants.

In addition to quite familiar tools and scam scripts that improve aiming, movements and show enemies behind opaque walls, Korean cheaters began to switch to heavy artillery. Recently, a method has emerged that was dubbed Nuking. At the first acquaintance, there may be a fear that attackers attack the IP-addresses of players, which are revealed by a “hole” in the game protocol. In fact, Nuking is a Counter Strike DDoS attack on a game server familiar to players.


An example of an attack in action on one of the most popular channels in Korea. One of the first times Nuking was noticed.

By overloading the game server, attackers can achieve:

• The inability to move players. This is useful on maps, where one of the teams must accompany the goods, and the second - to interfere with this process. Then the teams change places, and the result is compared. Cheaters perform their own escort round, but for the other team’s round of attack, DDoS is activated.
• Change cards on the server. Perhaps when the server crashes, the system directs players to another. Apparently, due to the settings of this process, the game is restarted on a random map.
• Random departures from individual players with the inability to return to the match. With all the negative consequences for the rating.
• Other problems caused by the loss of network packets: the inability to use special features, movement, sudden death, accidental movement on the map.

According to players' estimates , about 10% of Grandmaster-level Koreans (Elo from 4000 points) use aimbot, it is believed that 3-4% of them resort to DDoS attacks on game servers.

We can not but pay tribute to Blizzard: the company has recently conducted a massive wave of bans. The text on the forum emphasized that the bans were aimed at "nukers". The camp cheaters suffered losses on ten thousand accounts. But will the effect, if you just change the IP, register a new account and continue playing from the nearest Internet cafe?

So far, the outbreak of such attacks do not go beyond the borders of South Korea. If they step into the US and Europe, it is unclear how far Blizzard will go in protecting its game servers. Today, the DDoS attack of the required power can always be affordable for particularly energetic cheaters.