For quite some time now, pretty much everyone had to deal with the lowest kind of people, those who have no redeeming qualities — cheaters. 

Anticheat software

Every kind of software have to deal with hackers and cheaters, it is a pull/push situation, where Anticheat software updates and Cheaters update their own stuff, never ending cycle. 

In our particular case, reaction time of updates for the Antichear software was slow, really slow. And in addition to that, spammers have plagued our chat channels with non-stop advertising. 

There are reasons why there was so little and so late action from our side. It is a combination of factors, really, that stacked together, and blocked one another. Up there a personal issues that developers had to deal with, technical things that took unbelievable time to resolve. Even the world peace struck against timely updates, because part of our dev team are directly affected by the war.

But ultimately, there is no excuse why it took soooo much time to deal with cheaters. I'm,  iCCup.Yello-Ant, as a founder and leader of the platform had to find a way to resolve it quicker, and for that I am really sorry and hopeful all of you guys, can accept my apology. 

What is next

First, of course — update of the Anticheat software to the new, 3rd Generation (1st was StarCraft, 2nd Hybrid StarCraft-WarCraft and 3rd is to be next gen WarCraft only)

It is a big one, it will take a lot of effort and time, that's why it is split into 5 stages. But hold old, there is good news —  the very first stage is already done and secretly deployed and has been working for the last month. 

First stage hunting party

To lure as many cheaters as we can, we decided on a stealth approach. Anticheat system has been detecting cheaters without giving away bans. So we can catch not only fake accounts but also some of the main accounts as well. And the list has been growing since.

Ban them all

The last month in numbers looks something like this:

Suspicious triggers flagged more than	175 000 Times
Multi level cross-checked about	30 000 Accounts
Deeper investigation started for about	700 Accounts
Banned forever exactly	1254 Accounts

New launcher and AntiSpam

Default WarCraft interface and Bnet server is extremely hard to modify and in part of those limitations spamers went rampant on all chat channels. 

As an intermediate solution, we are rolling out additional tools to deal with this chat plague. Details on that will be released in the future posts. Keep an eye on that, your involvement is crucial for this solution to be effective. 

But to get rid of the spammer problem completely, we need to switch to a new iteration of the iCCup launcher, that has already been tested as a closed Alpha. 

But it is almost time for the public Beta test as well! That means, you can get your hands on it in a bit.

What's new

The New launcher brings improved game lobby, updated game list with filter, so you can sort games by type, mode, host bots, you name it. Advanced chat that you can copy text from, click on links and nicknames. Detailed statistics after the game, where you can add a friend or issue a flame complaint in the same window, and much more. 

Basically, launcher will take on itself the old WarCraft interface:

1. Launcher:	Chat, Friends, Host game, Find game, Game lobby, Start of the game
2. WarCraft:	Game starts by loading the map itself
3. Launcher:	Post game, Stats, Charts, Friends etc., and back to stage 1.

By using Launcher's interface instead of the WarCraft itself, there are way more options and possibilities that we can explore, add new functionality and update old things. 

What is cooking

Right now in the development we have already something nice, for example: 

— Accepting donations from all over the world via new Partnership  
— iCCup store Personal control panel (activate and deactivate services)
— Flags and Icons control, pick and choose from your collection
— Way more stats in your gaming profile
— Custom maps ladders (not just DotA)
— Custom maps pack weekly updates
— Increased amount of  friends in your friend list
— Karma system, based on good and bad actions of the players, that you can vote on
and much more... 

Let's push mid together 

There are some issues that need to be resolved and improved. And with your help we can deal with all of it, make it better, faster, stronger. Our community can go on. Thank you, once more, for your patience and let's go push mid together :)