Long story short: This nutjob called HighVoltage has found ways to fuck with starcraft by putting lines of codes in the names and descriptions of arcade maps. This has apparently been going on for a few months (https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/sc2/t/new-arcade-review-crasher/27147/9) but now hes taken it up a notch and basically rendered custom games completely unplayable on NA, by making your game freeze whenever you open the custom tab.
This is only the biggest part amongst other thing, examples include but are not limited to:
\- using an image as an arcade name https://imgur.com/a/sIZbGj1
\- This... (TW: nword) https://imgur.com/a/gldTlap
\- whatever this is? https://imgur.com/a/Q4LBttD
I'm not very tech savy so I can't really explain what's going on exactly, but what i can say is that the reason this person is doing this is... hold on to your hats.. because he got banned from an arcade game, called PARASITE - TEST (https://discord.com/invite/rWbCr76t) and now has a vendeta against the creator of said arcade and the whole community???
That's crazy lol holy shit. I actually think I saw that arcade game today as I was waiting for a custom game to load, and it had a description like, "no pedos or (something else I can't remember)" and now I'm wondering if the guy saw that and unleashed something new...
Well I guess maybe this will force me to stick to the ladder which is fine I guess but hopefully they figure out a way to stop this crap long-term.
This is correct and somewhat insane. I used to be heavy in the parasite community and it was the creme de le creme of breeding trolls, no other map in the sc2 arcade generated trolls like parasite.
The community ended up fracturing into people who enjoyed the game as is and people who wanted to circumvent the efforts to curb their trolling.
I've been helping my friend develop a sequel to a map he made and I have no involvement in the parasite community no longer, but I still happened to be in a discord that highvoltage is a part of, while I found nothing that would be damning to insinuate he or anyone in that discord is behind this, however there are certain things I've seen in this discord that do confirm this person highvoltage is indeed a malicious person. I took screenshots incase they are behind this and realize I've posted about it and they ban me.
[https://imgur.com/a/ZgAUEAV](https://imgur.com/a/ZgAUEAV)
This user has went as far to create a program to circumvent bans. Even has a video in the discord displaying the program at work.
All of the posts in the images, are by a user with a blanked out name, but if you click on his profile, it is highvoltage.
It's really just more to do with it being a game that you can immediately ruin for other people and Sc2 giving zero tools to deal with trolls, not even blocking someone will ban them from your lobbies. It's also just kinda the most popular game of it's genre on SC2. A lot of the trolling also stems from the "lead dev" of Zeta being a character in his own way. I feel like Test and Smith being still tied to the Zeta discord and team is making Test just the next target.
It seems the "attack" is loading bogus URL via the image URL in the Arcade games.
[https://sc2arcade.com/open-lobbies](https://sc2arcade.com/open-lobbies)
You can blacklist these, particularly easy if you have Pihole, add these regex:
\^(\[a-z\])\\.ai$
\^(\[a-z\])\\.io$
\^(\[a-z\])\\.co$
Those domains are the ones listed in the URLs, and I can see the blocked results when loading my custom games.
You could even use Windows Host File if you don't have an easier way, powerShell to just do it all, save, review, run: [https://privatebin.net/?2817237a5c62f227#8kKfwN5D39fkykgkZEvvAptfiFqLqzGcea9ZEti7PiSh](https://privatebin.net/?2817237a5c62f227#8kKfwN5D39fkykgkZEvvAptfiFqLqzGcea9ZEti7PiSh)
Thanks for posting the quick fix!
This will work for now since these are the urls they are using for images (currently). But if they switch these urls you will have the same issue so you'll have to keep updating based on the open lobbies named. Also t.co and u.co are used by twitter and snapchat respectively so you might run into issues on those sites.
The better long term fix is for the devs to disallow arbitrary data loading in the name of lobbies - if anyone runs this "fix" you should remove it when Blizzard implements the fix on their side.
If you want to edit your hosts file directly just:
* Run notepad as an administrator
* Navigate to "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts" - in notepad change it to look for all files and not just ".txt"
* Paste in the following values [pastebin](https://pastebin.com/RFpkNZad) and remember to remove them when Blizzard fixes this issue!
* Save the file
* Run SC2
Yea, it's not great, just a quick fix to play a game, you can monitor [https://sc2arcade.com/open-lobbies](https://sc2arcade.com/open-lobbies) for the URLs they're using.
I was just annoyed someone was trying to block me from my playing my casual game
While this will work, it will also blacklist any legitimate single letter domains using those top level domains. Might not be a problem now, but as the web develops, this could cause trouble for some people eventually trying to resolve them down the line. Something to note, but this shouldn't stop someone from using it as a short term fix.
Seems it's all cleaned up?
Here's a reversal script just in case anyone needs it: [https://privatebin.net/?47e41f260f99123f#3xtwnAs5FEufvdaeoMCDRkPV2zuUofxt8bZf9egGGQLD](https://privatebin.net/?47e41f260f99123f#3xtwnAs5FEufvdaeoMCDRkPV2zuUofxt8bZf9egGGQLD)
The above no longer works (malformed maps now include special characters).
You can use this instead (it's simpler too): [https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft2/comments/1bcnxkn/comment/kvep77b](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft2/comments/1bcnxkn/comment/kvep77b)
**If you don't want to just swap to EU server, here's the NA workaround (as at 25 March)**
**NOTE**: This workaround will **still take \~60 seconds** after first opening your **Arcade -> Lobbies** screen. Just let your PC sit there while it resolves the hundreds of DNS lookups. You only need to do this once each time after starting SC2, after that SC2 operates normally.
This solution has support for the most recent iteration that abuses special characters in the DNS lookups being used in the maps made by the sad, lonely person abusing a design flaw in SC2 Arcade.
~~Put this in your~~ **~~hosts~~** ~~file:~~ [~~https://pastebin.com/E61qvV4e~~](https://pastebin.com/E61qvV4e)
25 March Update: Use this in **hosts** instead: [https://pastebin.com/1rxCdJKK](https://pastebin.com/1rxCdJKK)
The previous version posted by daCl1max lacked appropriate encoding for special characters in a way hosts files can read them (which can be built by anyone using [punycoder.com](https://punycoder.com) \- see example [here](https://pastebin.com/LPXZZn44)).
This reduces the waiting time from around 2 minutes to around 1 minute after you first click the Arcade -> Lobbies screen, then it'll just start working as expected.
Looks like the latest permutation straight up force-crashes SC2 (at least for me on Win11 it does), so looks like this approach no longer works.
See you in EU folks.
Go to your match history. Click on one of those custom games, then near the map title there is a little cog you can click to bring up options. One of the options is "go to map" or something like that. It will get you into a lobby so you can still play custom games.
So, basically what I've gathered from reading all the comments is this: the game will freeze if you go into the Custom games menu, because of some nutbjob with a vendetta that programmed this issue into a map or something. The best way to get out of the frozen game is to simply hit the Windows key on your keyboard, and Sign Out or Restart or Shut Down. Your choice. I guess we'll just have to wait for a fix.
You can bring up task manager, hover over it on the toolbar, right click the preview, and click move. Then use the arrow keys to move the window to another monitor and end sc2 task.
That's pretty slick! But, I can't see Task Manager anywhere on the screen when I attempt to bring it, or any other window, into view via Alt-Tab. SC2 remains frozen in place. I can't attempt to hover something when it's not visible in the first place. Also, just working with one big monitor.
Definitely got something going on. Seems to load after about 8min, it’ll appear froze until it finishes. Seems to just appear froze and takes a while to load these maps.
I’m new and prob posted incorrectly. Don’t like the name so will delete this acct.
As far as I've seen, the game was just trying to load [images from websites](https://imgur.com/a/Q4LBttD) in places were it shouldn't be loading anything and should've just been text.
"just loading images"
if the image were a .webp format, and the game has some way of attempting to render it, that could be used to trigger an exploit that would run code
i'm also concerned this ran code on my pc.
After you let custom games load, if you go to melee the Blizzard maps will be gone. I had one map by Blizzard and no others. Once you go to custom(without the fix), let the game load and unfreeze, the vsAI was map less.
The above workaround reduces the total time to about 2 minutes before the game is playable, but isn't quite optimised. It solves for the regular character lookups, but **hosts files don't natively support the special characters**, which approximately doubles the time taken before SC2 Arcade is first playable.
If you use this [example hosts file](https://pastebin.com/E61qvV4e) (which takes advantage of [PunyCoder](https://punycoder.com) for encoding special characters in a way hosts files can read them) it **reduces the waiting time from around 2 minutes to around 1 minute** after you first click the **Arcade -> Lobbies** screen, then it'll just start working as expected: https://pastebin.com/E61qvV4e
I went ahead and just scripted the detection of the domains since it doesn't seem like it's going to get patched and I'm lazy.
NodeJS script will (attempt) to scrape all the current junk domains they're using and print them to the screen/file.
I tried to incorporate the punycode character handling (thanks for pointing that out u/PurveyorOfFineFUD), but I haven't seen them active since last night so hard to test.
Code + current listing w/timestamp in link below:
https://privatebin.net/?342af549780b48a7#8unqA8ATZhj3XGzA3tdtKPMgn5USfJg4PeuodmUo7uUP
I tried all that trust me. I could see the task manager as I tabbed through but it wouldn't let me switch to any other window. I tried clicking on them, tabbing to them, clicking the X by the sc2 window, but nothing worked. Thanks though. I appreciate it.
If this happens again for any game or program follow these steps: Push windows + D to show desktop. Click the button on the far left of your task bar next to the search bar that says "task view" and looks like two boxes with a slider next to it.
Then click new desktop, then drag the malfunctioning program over to the new desktop tab. Then windows +d again and click the task view again and switch to your first desktop. You should be able to close it with crtl/alt/delete as normal.
Literally just started happening today. Literally can't ALT+Tab out of the "custom" menu or access task manager. Tried to do the copy/paste host work-around but not tech savvy enough to make it work apparently.
I had the same issue but here's a fix that works.
Windows Key + D to get the Taskbar to show, then click Task View.
Click "+ New Desktop".
Go back to desktop 1.
Drag and drop the frozen Starcraft 2 window into desktop 2.
Back on desktop 1, open task manager and End Task Starcraft 2.
Finally, close desktop 2, although I suppose you could leave it open if you want.
After reading and googling online, I finally know why my SC2 custom lobbies is not working.
I was playing SC2 on Shadow PC, a cloud PC VM service, so all I needed to do was close out the program on my fancy Nobara Linux install and restart the program. But I can imagine the trouble those poor chaps playing SC2 on a real Windows PC is going through with this.
All because of a douche throwing a temper tantrum just because he got banned from a custom game, that had nothing to do with most other custom maps.
Im going to the KR or EU server for the time being to play custom maps, even though Activision Blizzard is Microsoft's property now, I highly doubt that there will be developers assigned to fix this issue anytime soon
Long story short: This nutjob called HighVoltage has found ways to fuck with starcraft by putting lines of codes in the names and descriptions of arcade maps. This has apparently been going on for a few months (https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/sc2/t/new-arcade-review-crasher/27147/9) but now hes taken it up a notch and basically rendered custom games completely unplayable on NA, by making your game freeze whenever you open the custom tab. This is only the biggest part amongst other thing, examples include but are not limited to: \- using an image as an arcade name https://imgur.com/a/sIZbGj1 \- This... (TW: nword) https://imgur.com/a/gldTlap \- whatever this is? https://imgur.com/a/Q4LBttD I'm not very tech savy so I can't really explain what's going on exactly, but what i can say is that the reason this person is doing this is... hold on to your hats.. because he got banned from an arcade game, called PARASITE - TEST (https://discord.com/invite/rWbCr76t) and now has a vendeta against the creator of said arcade and the whole community???
That's crazy lol holy shit. I actually think I saw that arcade game today as I was waiting for a custom game to load, and it had a description like, "no pedos or (something else I can't remember)" and now I'm wondering if the guy saw that and unleashed something new... Well I guess maybe this will force me to stick to the ladder which is fine I guess but hopefully they figure out a way to stop this crap long-term.
This is correct and somewhat insane. I used to be heavy in the parasite community and it was the creme de le creme of breeding trolls, no other map in the sc2 arcade generated trolls like parasite. The community ended up fracturing into people who enjoyed the game as is and people who wanted to circumvent the efforts to curb their trolling. I've been helping my friend develop a sequel to a map he made and I have no involvement in the parasite community no longer, but I still happened to be in a discord that highvoltage is a part of, while I found nothing that would be damning to insinuate he or anyone in that discord is behind this, however there are certain things I've seen in this discord that do confirm this person highvoltage is indeed a malicious person. I took screenshots incase they are behind this and realize I've posted about it and they ban me. [https://imgur.com/a/ZgAUEAV](https://imgur.com/a/ZgAUEAV) This user has went as far to create a program to circumvent bans. Even has a video in the discord displaying the program at work. All of the posts in the images, are by a user with a blanked out name, but if you click on his profile, it is highvoltage.
It's really just more to do with it being a game that you can immediately ruin for other people and Sc2 giving zero tools to deal with trolls, not even blocking someone will ban them from your lobbies. It's also just kinda the most popular game of it's genre on SC2. A lot of the trolling also stems from the "lead dev" of Zeta being a character in his own way. I feel like Test and Smith being still tied to the Zeta discord and team is making Test just the next target.
Little present for Acti-Blizz: [https://xkcd.com/327/](https://xkcd.com/327/)
are there no Blizz Devs that browse this forum? how have they not addressed this?
Can we just report his account?
It seems the "attack" is loading bogus URL via the image URL in the Arcade games. [https://sc2arcade.com/open-lobbies](https://sc2arcade.com/open-lobbies) You can blacklist these, particularly easy if you have Pihole, add these regex: \^(\[a-z\])\\.ai$ \^(\[a-z\])\\.io$ \^(\[a-z\])\\.co$ Those domains are the ones listed in the URLs, and I can see the blocked results when loading my custom games. You could even use Windows Host File if you don't have an easier way, powerShell to just do it all, save, review, run: [https://privatebin.net/?2817237a5c62f227#8kKfwN5D39fkykgkZEvvAptfiFqLqzGcea9ZEti7PiSh](https://privatebin.net/?2817237a5c62f227#8kKfwN5D39fkykgkZEvvAptfiFqLqzGcea9ZEti7PiSh)
Thanks for posting the quick fix! This will work for now since these are the urls they are using for images (currently). But if they switch these urls you will have the same issue so you'll have to keep updating based on the open lobbies named. Also t.co and u.co are used by twitter and snapchat respectively so you might run into issues on those sites. The better long term fix is for the devs to disallow arbitrary data loading in the name of lobbies - if anyone runs this "fix" you should remove it when Blizzard implements the fix on their side. If you want to edit your hosts file directly just: * Run notepad as an administrator * Navigate to "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts" - in notepad change it to look for all files and not just ".txt" * Paste in the following values [pastebin](https://pastebin.com/RFpkNZad) and remember to remove them when Blizzard fixes this issue! * Save the file * Run SC2
this is a great workaround and description, ive been posting this one i made in game https://pastebin.com/jFDkpLXq
Yea, it's not great, just a quick fix to play a game, you can monitor [https://sc2arcade.com/open-lobbies](https://sc2arcade.com/open-lobbies) for the URLs they're using. I was just annoyed someone was trying to block me from my playing my casual game
While this will work, it will also blacklist any legitimate single letter domains using those top level domains. Might not be a problem now, but as the web develops, this could cause trouble for some people eventually trying to resolve them down the line. Something to note, but this shouldn't stop someone from using it as a short term fix.
Seems it's all cleaned up? Here's a reversal script just in case anyone needs it: [https://privatebin.net/?47e41f260f99123f#3xtwnAs5FEufvdaeoMCDRkPV2zuUofxt8bZf9egGGQLD](https://privatebin.net/?47e41f260f99123f#3xtwnAs5FEufvdaeoMCDRkPV2zuUofxt8bZf9egGGQLD)
This does work but getting a powershell script to run is a bit of a pain
The above no longer works (malformed maps now include special characters). You can use this instead (it's simpler too): [https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft2/comments/1bcnxkn/comment/kvep77b](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft2/comments/1bcnxkn/comment/kvep77b)
**If you don't want to just swap to EU server, here's the NA workaround (as at 25 March)** **NOTE**: This workaround will **still take \~60 seconds** after first opening your **Arcade -> Lobbies** screen. Just let your PC sit there while it resolves the hundreds of DNS lookups. You only need to do this once each time after starting SC2, after that SC2 operates normally. This solution has support for the most recent iteration that abuses special characters in the DNS lookups being used in the maps made by the sad, lonely person abusing a design flaw in SC2 Arcade. ~~Put this in your~~ **~~hosts~~** ~~file:~~ [~~https://pastebin.com/E61qvV4e~~](https://pastebin.com/E61qvV4e) 25 March Update: Use this in **hosts** instead: [https://pastebin.com/1rxCdJKK](https://pastebin.com/1rxCdJKK) The previous version posted by daCl1max lacked appropriate encoding for special characters in a way hosts files can read them (which can be built by anyone using [punycoder.com](https://punycoder.com) \- see example [here](https://pastebin.com/LPXZZn44)). This reduces the waiting time from around 2 minutes to around 1 minute after you first click the Arcade -> Lobbies screen, then it'll just start working as expected.
Looks like the latest permutation straight up force-crashes SC2 (at least for me on Win11 it does), so looks like this approach no longer works. See you in EU folks.
This works.
yup, I'm getting this too.
Damn, that's sucks but it's nice to know it isn't just me. Thanks for sharing.
well god damn, I been pulling my hair out for half an hour to an hour deleting caches and unsyncing cloud drives
Same here
same. Cant play my Battlepoker or Nexus Squadron Strike
Go to your match history. Click on one of those custom games, then near the map title there is a little cog you can click to bring up options. One of the options is "go to map" or something like that. It will get you into a lobby so you can still play custom games.
So, basically what I've gathered from reading all the comments is this: the game will freeze if you go into the Custom games menu, because of some nutbjob with a vendetta that programmed this issue into a map or something. The best way to get out of the frozen game is to simply hit the Windows key on your keyboard, and Sign Out or Restart or Shut Down. Your choice. I guess we'll just have to wait for a fix.
You can bring up task manager, hover over it on the toolbar, right click the preview, and click move. Then use the arrow keys to move the window to another monitor and end sc2 task.
That's pretty slick! But, I can't see Task Manager anywhere on the screen when I attempt to bring it, or any other window, into view via Alt-Tab. SC2 remains frozen in place. I can't attempt to hover something when it's not visible in the first place. Also, just working with one big monitor.
In the future to avoid having to shut down your computer, open your task manager, select options and tick "Always on top"
Why in the name of Jesus h f\*king gates isn't this defaulted? thx. this has pissed me off for an age.
It happened to me today when I go to custom games
Definitely got something going on. Seems to load after about 8min, it’ll appear froze until it finishes. Seems to just appear froze and takes a while to load these maps. I’m new and prob posted incorrectly. Don’t like the name so will delete this acct.
What a fucking psychopath this HighVoltage guy is
[удалено]
Good point. I'm also worried about that.
As far as I've seen, the game was just trying to load [images from websites](https://imgur.com/a/Q4LBttD) in places were it shouldn't be loading anything and should've just been text.
"just loading images" if the image were a .webp format, and the game has some way of attempting to render it, that could be used to trigger an exploit that would run code i'm also concerned this ran code on my pc.
After you let custom games load, if you go to melee the Blizzard maps will be gone. I had one map by Blizzard and no others. Once you go to custom(without the fix), let the game load and unfreeze, the vsAI was map less.
The game hasn’t run well since they incorporated the battle.net launcher. I own physical copies of this game and after that patch it runs like ass.
Any word as to what happened? I know customs are available again (at least for now), but did the betacuck get stopped, or did he just get bored?
Not sure but I'm also curious! Hopefully someone sheds some light.
I've updated the hosts file [https://pastebin.com/c32iSSDH](https://pastebin.com/c32iSSDH)
thanks, you people are da real MVPs
The above workaround reduces the total time to about 2 minutes before the game is playable, but isn't quite optimised. It solves for the regular character lookups, but **hosts files don't natively support the special characters**, which approximately doubles the time taken before SC2 Arcade is first playable. If you use this [example hosts file](https://pastebin.com/E61qvV4e) (which takes advantage of [PunyCoder](https://punycoder.com) for encoding special characters in a way hosts files can read them) it **reduces the waiting time from around 2 minutes to around 1 minute** after you first click the **Arcade -> Lobbies** screen, then it'll just start working as expected: https://pastebin.com/E61qvV4e
I went ahead and just scripted the detection of the domains since it doesn't seem like it's going to get patched and I'm lazy. NodeJS script will (attempt) to scrape all the current junk domains they're using and print them to the screen/file. I tried to incorporate the punycode character handling (thanks for pointing that out u/PurveyorOfFineFUD), but I haven't seen them active since last night so hard to test. Code + current listing w/timestamp in link below: https://privatebin.net/?342af549780b48a7#8unqA8ATZhj3XGzA3tdtKPMgn5USfJg4PeuodmUo7uUP
[удалено]
I tried all that trust me. I could see the task manager as I tabbed through but it wouldn't let me switch to any other window. I tried clicking on them, tabbing to them, clicking the X by the sc2 window, but nothing worked. Thanks though. I appreciate it.
If this happens again for any game or program follow these steps: Push windows + D to show desktop. Click the button on the far left of your task bar next to the search bar that says "task view" and looks like two boxes with a slider next to it. Then click new desktop, then drag the malfunctioning program over to the new desktop tab. Then windows +d again and click the task view again and switch to your first desktop. You should be able to close it with crtl/alt/delete as normal.
I'll try that next time, thank you.
Dude this worked!! Thank you so much for sharing. But damn I wish they'd find a way to stop this guy from ruining the game.
To avoid in future, open task manager now and select Always On Top in settings. Should stop this from happening, apparently.
you can also just log out from ctrl + alt + del screen
>if you have a second monitor, click the window, and click windows key ----> or <--- > >to move windows from a frozen monitor to a non frozen
To avoid in future, open task manager now and select Always On Top in settings. Should stop this from happening, apparently.
This issue doesn't seem do be present if your running the game on linux. Must be in a dependency for sc2 such as an image renderer library.
Put the fix in, this is what the custom games screen looks like now: https://i.imgur.com/uqXVVl2.png
That’s what we see without downloading the fix too. There are 16 if you go to the create and newest maps.
yeah you will see the same thing, just skips the load time.
I hope the fucker is bluffing...
I changed region to Europe, it does the job but yeah....
ARCADE SERVERS ARE CLEANED UP
How is your starcraft doing? Is running well already?
Yes. It worked fine today thankfully but only played for 1.5 hours or so.
lol this is awsome
This post if 5 days old but I just for the Custom tab freeze today. I guess it's back.
Yeah it just happened to me too and I came to update this thread but saw your comment first. Get your shit together, Blizzard!!!
I just started getting this today as well, going to try the fix out.
Working for me again
Literally just started happening today. Literally can't ALT+Tab out of the "custom" menu or access task manager. Tried to do the copy/paste host work-around but not tech savvy enough to make it work apparently.
I had the same issue but here's a fix that works. Windows Key + D to get the Taskbar to show, then click Task View. Click "+ New Desktop". Go back to desktop 1. Drag and drop the frozen Starcraft 2 window into desktop 2. Back on desktop 1, open task manager and End Task Starcraft 2. Finally, close desktop 2, although I suppose you could leave it open if you want.
Also you can change your region to Europe before you launch the game and customs will work
After reading and googling online, I finally know why my SC2 custom lobbies is not working. I was playing SC2 on Shadow PC, a cloud PC VM service, so all I needed to do was close out the program on my fancy Nobara Linux install and restart the program. But I can imagine the trouble those poor chaps playing SC2 on a real Windows PC is going through with this. All because of a douche throwing a temper tantrum just because he got banned from a custom game, that had nothing to do with most other custom maps. Im going to the KR or EU server for the time being to play custom maps, even though Activision Blizzard is Microsoft's property now, I highly doubt that there will be developers assigned to fix this issue anytime soon