Blizzard’s collectible card game is a popular pastime for many gamers, but a lead member of Google’s anti-abuse research created a tool that is able to predict what cards your opponent is using in order to make winning easier.
At recent Defcon 22 hacking conference in Las Vegas, Elie Bursztein reveled a hack tool to “hack” Hearthstone and increase the chance for gamers to defeat their enemy.
“The tool uses data analysis to find undervalued cards and exploits game structure using machine learning to predict your opponent’s deck“.post on Elie blog
“Following Defcon we had a series of conversations with the Hearthstone team about our research. They like our research on game/cards balance and are very enthusiastic and supportive about it,” Bursztein started.
“On the other hand, they were very concerned that our real time dashboard that can predict your opponent’s deck will break the game balance by giving that person (that is, whoever has the tool) an unfair advantage. They also expressed concern that such a tool makes the game less fun by taking away some of the decision-making from the player,” he explained.
The Hearthstone team confused about either should it be publish nor hidden and blocked, as now gamers have fun hacking and cheating the opponent as so the team said, “We will not release the tool publicly“.
The fact that the Blizzard staff members persuaded him to keep the work private is a good thing, but mostly for PR reasons, because there already are many people complaining that they are seeing a large number of bots farming the Hearthstone ladder for gold.